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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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EDITED BY 



W. J. LINTON AND R. H. STODDARD 



LYRICS 



OF THE 



XIX™ CENTURY 



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NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1883 






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Copyright, 1883, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER^S SONS 



Trow's 

Printing and Bookbinding Company 

201-213 East Tivel/tk Street 

NEW YORK 



INTR OD UC TION. 



The history of English Verse in the nineteenth cen- 
tury implies more than appears in the Verse itself, for 
granting that it is understood by contemporary stu- 
dents — a supposition which is contradicted by literary 
history in general — its origins are still to be sought 
and discovered. Bibliography enables us to trace its 
progress from year to year, and, if it be carefully stud- 
ied, enables us to trace its intellectual direction 
likewise. Biography is also of service, conducting us 
through its special province like a guide who is famil- 
iar with the ground that he traverses ; and history is of 
the greatest service, provided it be largely written and 
intelligently read, for so written and read, it authenti- 
cates and justifies all that it embraces — the violence of 
passion as well as the repose of power, Thersites and 
Ajax as well as Achilles and Nestor. If we place our- 
selves in thought on the threshold of the nineteenth 
century, and look back with critical eyes upon the 
poetical literature of the eighteenth century — or upon 
the small portion of it which continued to be read at 
its close — the prospect is not an enlivening one. To 
say that it was in any large sense a poetical period 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

would not be true. It was not a creative period like 
the age of Elizabeth, for though its most famous 
hands cultivated the art of writing tragedies, and pro- 
duced their Catos, Jane Shores, Distrest Mothers, 
Mariamnes, Sophonisbas, Irenes, and what not besides, 
they added nothing to the English Drama. The crea- 
tive energy of the eighteenth century exhausted itself 
in The Rape of the Lock and The Dunciad. Pope 
carried the satire of manners and of character as far 
as it could go : he was a wit, but not a poet. Thomson 
tried to open the eyes of his contemporaries to Na- 
ture, and succeeded in a measure, though not nearly so 
well as Collins in his unrhymed Ode to Evening, or 
Gray in the opening stanzas of his immortal Elegy. 
The Elegy is more read to-day than any poem of its 
time, partly because it is the most perfect specimen of 
its poetic art, and partly because the train of thought 
which runs through it can never be dismissed from the 
human mind. It will live as long as men live and die. 
It was surpassed, perhaps, by certain poetic qualities 
in the Odes of Collins, which fell dead from the press 
about four years before it was published, but it was 
not surpassed or equalled by anything else. Looking 
back upon it now we can see what Gray's contempora- 
ries could not see — that it was a great landmark in the 
monotonous waste of their verse. The dead level of 
prose to which Pope had reduced all metrical writing 
surrounded it like a desert. While he lived the springs 
of his genius watered the roots of stately palms, but 
when he died only stunted reeds remained to shoAV 
where the watercourses had been. Ethics had dwin- 
dled into didncticism, and the heroic measure intojing- 



INTRODUCTION. V 

ling couplets which school-boys wrote for pastime. If 
we had lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, 
and had shared the poetic taste of our contemporaries, 
what would we have had to read ? We would have 
had to read The Splendid Shilling and the Cyder of 
Philips, the Pastorals of Pope and his Essay on Crit- / 
icism. Gay's Rural Sports and Shepherd's Week, 
Glover's Leonidas, and Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad. 
A little later we would have had to read Young's 
Night Thoughts, Armstrong's Art of Preserving 
Health, Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, Dyer's 
Fleece, and Grainger's Sugar Cane. If the saccharine 
production of good Dr. Grainger had not been to our 
liking, and it is possible that we might have found its 
sweetness a little cloying, we could have taken the pre- 
scription of another physician — an uncouth, pock- 
marked Irishman, who had studied at Edinburgh and 
Leyden, and, after travelling about the Continent on 
foot, occasionally playing upon the flute for his victuals 
when his funds ran low, had settled down in London 
as a bookseller's hack. 

We could have read Dr. Goldsmith's Traveller, or a 
Prospect of Society, and if w^e had done so we could 
not but have felt the spell of his frank and manly 
genius. We might have been prompted to make his 
acquaintance, if we had chanced to be in London at 
the time, and perhaps the acquaintance of his bullying 
friend and patron, the great Dr. Johnson, who, if he 
had taken a fancy to us, after a good dinner at the 
Mitre Tavern, might have asked us to visit him at his 
lodgings in Bolt Court, where we would have seen his 
strange menagerie of pensioners — Robert Levett, prac- 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

titioner of physic, poor, stuttering Miss Jane Williams, 
the blind poetess, Miss Carmichael, Mrs. Dumoulin, 
the widow of a writing-master, the negro, Francis 
Barber, and that pert young coxcomb (cowed there), 
Mr. James Boswell, advocate, of Auchinleck, Scot- 
land. Goldsmith would no doubt have told us of 
Johnson's kindness to him, particularly in selling the 
manuscript of his Vicar of Wakefield, and releasing 
him from the clutches of his landlady, who insisted 
upon his marrying her or settling his score, and have 
asked us to subscribe to Johnson's Shakespeare, which 
we would have done gladly, having already upon our 
shelves the editions of Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Han- 
mer, and Warburton, to say nothing of the Folios, 
which we had inherited with the old manor-house in 
Surrey. Six years later we would have had another 
poem from the pen of the ingenious Dr. Goldsmith, 
The Deserted Village, and the public journals would 
have informed us of the death of Dr. Akenside. They 
might also have informed us of the death of one 
Thomas Chatterton, a Bristol boy of eighteen, who 
was supposed to have poisoned himself ; but the para- 
graph, if we had seen it, would have had no signifi- 
cance to us, for little was talked about then in the 
colfee-houses except the letters of Junius in the Public 
Advertiser. The dearth of good contemporary poetry 
in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century drove 
us back to the earlier poets, of whom we could not 
well help knowing something by that time, since the 
Reverend Dr. Thomas Percy, a Northumberland vicar, 
whom we remember to have met one day in the cham- 
bers of Dr. Goldsmith (the very day, by the way, in 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

which the little daughter of a fellow-lodger borrowed 
the coals in her eccentric scuttle), had published in 
the year after The Traveller three solid volumes of 
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, the materials for 
which he obtained from an old manuscript collection, 
and which, of course, he polished and modernized lest 
they should offend the polite taste of his contempo- 
raries. We differed with Johnson in our estimate of 
this work, for he ridiculed it as a useless resurrection 
of obsolete rubbish, while we thought it a rude but in- 
teresting monument of poetic antiquity. There were 
many things which Johnson could not comprehend — 
which the coarseness of his mind would not allow him 
to apprehend — and one of these things was poetry. If 
the tenor of his writings had not indicated this fact, 
if it was not apparent in his edition of Shakespeare, 
it would have been forced upon us — it would have 
been driven into us — by his Lives of the Poets. They 
could not have been written in any period that had not 
forfeited every claim to poetic criticism as well as 
poetic creation. No poet would have consented to be- 
gin a collection of English Poets with Cowley, or 
w^ould have admitted into a collection of English Poets 
such dreary versifiers as Roscommon, and Sheffield, 
and Congreve, and Sprat, and Walsh, and no critic 
could have stultified himself as Johnson did when he 
penned his animadversions upon the sonnets of Milton. 
Criticism and poetry were fallen on evil days and evil 
tongues in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. 
Poetry indeed — at any rate poetry of a high order — ■ 
was no longer written. Nor was there any reason why 
it ever should be a^-ain. There was nothinc: that ao- 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

pealed to it — nothing heroic that demanded it — no 
movement in the life of the time that did not find the 
fullest expression in prose — no seed of light in the 
darkness, no prophecy and promise of Morning, how- 
ever remote, that might smite the silent lips of Mem- 
non into Song, 

But the darkest hour is just before day. It is so in 
nature, we are told, and it is sometimes so in art and 
letters. It was certainly so in poetry, for while John- 
son was wanting the last of his Lives of the Poets a new 
poet was w^riting the first of his grave and thoughtful 
strains. The son of a chaplain of George the Second, 
a Westminster scholar, and a solicitor of the Middle 
Temple, he had been crossed in love, had attempted 
his owm life, and had been placed in the mad-house of 
a brother poet. Released from durance before he was 
quite sane (if he ever was quite sane), he retired to 
lodgings in the country, and became the inmate of a 
clergyman's family, first at Huntingdon, and afterward 
at Olney, where he had the misfortune to fall into the 
spiritual hands of a curate who had once been master 
of a slave-vessel, and w^ho pressed him into religion 
and the writing of lugubrious hymns. Another attack 
of lunacy led to another attempt upon his life. He 
recovered, however, and, watched over by the clergy- 
man's widow, was induced to divert his mind with 
gardening and the gambols of tame hares. To these 
rational amusements he was at last persuaded to add 
the composition of verse, and having up to this time 
learned nothing that was of value to himself, he natur- 
ally proceeded to instruct mankind. Such was William 
Cowper, when, at the age of forty-eight, he began to 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

sing of Truth and the Progress of Error, of Hope and 
Charity, of Conversation and Retirement. His themes 
and his method of handling them were not poetical, 
but they were not averse from the good sense with 
which he illustrated them, and which made readers for 
him among the serious classes of his countrymen. His 
didacticism was accepted for all it was worth. The 
writing of these poems confirmed Cowper in the 
literary habit, and revealed to him the natural direc- 
tion of his talents. He cast themx in the heroic couplet, 
which still maintained its ascendency in English 
Verse, though its most polished master had been dead 
nearly forty years, but with a force and freedom that 
would have startled the delicate sensibilities of Pope. 
He wrote all like a man, as Ben Jonson said of his 
poetic son Cartwright, but not like the man he was to 
prove himself in his next work. The Task, which was 
published in the year after the death of Dr. Johnson, 
placed him at once at the head of living English poets. 
A greater than he was singing, but his first volume 
was not published until a year later than The Task, 
when it stole into English Verse at Kilmarnock. The 
long and dreary reign of Pope and his followers, the 
reign of prose in the singing robes of poetry, was 
over when Cowper and Burns began to celebrate wiiat 
they felt and what they saw — one pursuing a suggestion 
of Lady Austin, which led him from a sofa into the 
sober world of English thought and the charming 
world of English rural scenery, the other pursuing the 
inspiration of his owm genius, which, while he followed 
the plough along the mountain side, led him into the 
canny world of Scottish wisdom and the stormy world 



X INTRODUCTION. 

of Scottish passion and indulgence. Long hidden from 
the priests who had thronged her sanctuary and offered 
her their empty lip service, the Muse revealed herself 
to Cowper and Burns, and the face which smiled upon 
them as she lifted her veil was the face of the Sovereign 
Mother. Lesser poetic voices in the last two decades 
of the eighteenth century were Erasmus Darwin, who 
mistook a Botanic Garden for Tempe and the vales of 
Arcady : Charlotte Smith and William Lisle Bowles, 
who prolonged their personal disappointments in in- 
different sonnets : William Hayley, who placated the 
Triumphs of Temper : Samuel Rogers, who, walking in 
the steps of Akenside, sang The Pleasures of Memory ; 
Thomas Campbell, who, walking in the steps of Ro- 
gers, sang The Pleasures of Hope ; and Robert Bloom- 
field, who, trying to walk in the steps of Cowper and 
Thomson, sang The Farmer's Boy, 

Looking back along the literature of the eighteenth 
century we see that English Verse was largely culti- 
vated therein, but we do not see that the harvest was 
ever abundant. Looking upon it as we look upon the 
nineteenth century, or so much of the nineteenth cen- 
tury as lies behind us, and comparing the one w^ith the 
other — the sterility of the reigns of Queen Anne and the 
first two Georges with the fertility of the reigns of the 
fourth George and Victoria — we are disposed to pity 
our ancestors and to congratulate ourselves. From 
whatever point of view we compare ourselves with 
them we are struck with our own superiority. Waiv- 
ing our knowledge of the natural sciences, the most 
advanced branches of which were the merest empiri- 
cism in their day, and our proficiency in philology, the 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

nature and extent of which were scarcely suspected 
then ; and waiving, also, the perfection of our civiliza- 
tion, of w^hich railways and steamships, the electric 
telegraph and the telephone, are the material manifesta- 
tions ; waiving, in short, everything except literature, / 
which depends less than any other intellectual pursuit ' 
upon the social condition of the people among whom 
it is cultivated — what relation, we ask, does the litera- ' 
ture of the eighteenth century bear to the literature of 
the nineteenth century ? Let us take one department 
thereof in which both centuries have produced ac- 
knowledged masters ; a department which is least liable 
to change in that it concerns itself with what is least 
changeable in man — his passions — what did the eigh- 
teenth century offer its readers in the shape of prose 
fiction ? Tracing back the succession of English novel- 
ists we pass the names of Sophia and Harriet Lee, 
Matthew Gregory Lewis, Charlotte Smith, Ann Rad- 
cliff, Frances Burney, and Henry Mackenzie. When 
we come to the name of Goldsmith we stop, and yawn- 
ing over our early recollections of The Man of Feeling, 
Evelina, and The Mysteries of Udolpho, we take up 
The Vicar of Wakefield for the twentieth time, and find 
it as delightful as at the first reading. If we have 
a strong sense of humor, and are willing to follow it 
whithersoever it may lead, we can still be amused by 
Humphrey Clinker and Roderick Random, although 
they become rather tedious before we finish them. We 
enjoy portions of Tristram Shandy, but it is with a sort 
of protest, for we feel that we are being fooled with, 
and we resent the foolery. We try to read Richardson, 
but the more we try the less we read ; for granting that 



XU INTRODUCTION. \ 

\ 
all the fine things which have been said of him are true, \ 
they count for nothing with us, he is such a tiresome ' 
old prig. We forgive him, however, as we forgive 
Southey for writing his Vision of Judgment, for with- 
out that we should not have had Byron's Vision of 
Judgment, as without Pamela we should not have had ! 
Joseph Andrews. Fielding is the only eighteenth cen- i 
tury novelist whom it is possible to read w4th pleasure ! 
and profit now — with the pleasure that we always receive j 
from masterly delineations of character, and the profit ] 
that we always receive from contemporary delineations 
of manners. We feel that we can trust him as we trust ' 
Shakespeare, for though we may never have met them i 
or their kind before, the moment his personages appear 
they authenticate themselves. Byron summed up the 
w^orld's verdict upon Fielding when he called him the j 
Prose Homer of human nature. Thirty years before 
Fielding wrote Tom Jones, a much-writing English- 
man, a Dissenter, who had been a hosier in Cornhill, a 
traitor with Monmouth, a trader in Spain and Portugal, 
a financial projector, and a political pamphleteer, and 
who had stood in the Pillory, as Pope took care to in- 
form his polite readers — this restless, adventurous j 
spirit, weary at last of persecutions and arrests, sat 
down in retirement, at the age of fifty-eight, with a ' 
wife and six children, and penned The Life and Sur- i 
prising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, \ 
Mariner. Like nothing that had ever been written ' 
before, it was read with avidity by the common English > 
people, who had not the least suspicion that they were ! 
reading fiction. It was so simple and natural indeed, 
so circumstantial in its enumeration of details, and so \ 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

thorough in its narration of incidents that it could not 
have been invented. There was the same air of veri- 
similitude in The Life and Piracies of Captain Single- 
ton, Moll Flanders, and the Life and Adventures of 
Colonel Jack, which followed at intervals of a year 
each, and in The Memoirs of a Cavalier, Roxana, and 
The Life of Captain Carleton. The literary art of De 
Foe was so perfect that it deceived Dr. Johnson, who 
believed the last of these fictions to be a genuine con- 
tribution to history. Such, in brief, was English fic- 
tion in the eighteenth century, and, think as kindly of 
it as we may, we must confess that it was not worthy 
of the genius of the English people. There was some- 
thing in the condition of that people during the greater 
portion of that century, which was not favorable to the 
exercise and development of their nobler qualities, 
which obstructed the operations of the mind, checked 
the excursions of the imagination, and suspended if it 
did not destroy the creative energy. They proved their 
patriotism by winning victories for Churchill in the 
Low Countries, and for Walpole in the House of Com- 
mons. They set up an idol they called Loyalty — an 
insular Janus of Church and State, which hisfh and low 
alike worshipped. The Church upheld the State, and 
the State upheld the Church, and between the two the 
subject went to the wall. Authority demanded sub- 
mission, and if it were refused enforced it. But it was 
not often refused, for the Englishman of the eighteenth 
century knew his place. He was Master, or he was 
man. If he was statesman, he kept himself in power 
by obeying the commands of His Majesty : if he was 
churchman, he kissed benefices out of the hands of His 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

Majesty's Mistresses : if he was soldier — but perhaps 
there is no truth in the stories that they tell about 
Marlborough. It was not a high-minded century, but 
it was a successful one, for its master-spirits, wiser in 
their generation than the children of light, contrived 
to prosper in their double worship of God and Mam- 
mon. 

That the literature of the nineteenth century should 
have grown out of the literature of the eighteenth 
century seems at the first sight impossible, so different 
are their forms and the spirit by which they are 
animated. But when we study them attentively we 
discover their relation to each other, and to the litera- 
ture of the preceding centuries, for whether we see it 
or not, the w^hole Literature of England is distinguished 
by the same intellectual characteristics, — the qualities 
and energies which constitute the English Mind, and 
which run through it like the family likeness in a gal- 
lery of ancestral portraits. The chief defect which 
nineteenth century criticism finds in eighteenth cen- 
tury Verse is that it is prose in a metrical form. 
The quality which we feel in Chaucer, and Spenser, 
and Shakespeare, and Milton, among the older 
poets, and in Burns, and Byron, and Shelley, and 
Keats, among the poets of our own time, is not in it. 
Precisely what this quality is criticism has not deter- 
mined, its manifestations are so multiform, and so 
colored by the personality of its possessors. It w^as a 
certain simplicity and freshness in Chaucer, who had a 
childlike delight in telling stories ; a sense of spiritual 
purity and loveliness in Spenser, who was at once the 
most melodious and most picturesque of poets ; an 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

intuitive comprehension of mankind in Shakespeare, 
from whom nature had no secrets ; a reverence for 
austerity of conduct and sublimity of aspiration in 
Milton ; a hunger and thirst of passion in Burns and 
Byron ; a blind devotion to impossible ideals in Shel- 
ley, and in Keats the perpetual worship of the Beauti- 
ful. The faculty of selecting poetical actions, — actions, 
that is, which are poetical because they are heroic, or 
pathetic, and the rarer faculty of creating them when 
they are lacking in human annals, — neither was vouch- 
safed to the eighteenth century poets. They were not 
large enough, nor simple enough, to care for man as he 
came from the hand of nature, — the creature of impulse, 
or circumstance, a law unto himself : what interested 
them, so far as they could be interested, were men in 
their sophisticated condition, the entangling congeries 
of artificiality which they called the Town. Now and 
then they were on the eve of writing poetry, and in 
almost any other period than the prosaic one in which 
it was their misfortune to live, they would have written 
poetry, for among their number there were several 
men of genius. The penniless young Scotchman who 
went up to London in his twenty-fifth year, and had 
faith enough in himself, and in what he had observed 
of nature in his native land, to write a poem about it, 
in his own way, was a man of genius. And he was 
recognized as such by his contemporaries, against 
whose favorite poets and their methods of poetizing 
his simple, honest work was a protest, in that it dealt 
with nature, and not with society, with the pomps 
and shows of the Seasons, and not with powdered 
beaux and patched and painted belles. Nor was he 



XVI INTRODUCTION. 

alone, for another Scotchman who was fifteen years 
his elder, who had worked in a lead mine in his child- 
hood, and in his manhood at a barber's chair in Edin- 
burgh, — instructed by the Muse, had gathered from 
the neglected gardens of Henryson, Dunbar, Lyndsay, 
and other of his country's early poets, a handful of 
wilding flowers, which were still in sturdy bloom, and 
which he fitly named The Evergreen. Following the 
departure which he had thus taken from the high- 
"\vay of popular poetry, he explored the lanes and by- 
ways of old balladry and song, and plucking in his 
haste the flowers and weeds that w^ere alike abundant 
there, he modishly called his armfuls of both a Tea 
Table Miscellany. A year later he won the laurel 
which so many English poets had long and assiduously 
sought, — which Spenser hoped to obtain by his Shep- 
herd's Calendar, and Browne by his Britannia's Pastor- 
als, — which Pope snatched at, but missed, when he 
wrote his Pastorals, and which Gay also missed, al- 
though he did not snatch at it, — good, easy man ! — the 
laurel of pastoral poetry, which he was the first British 
poet to be crowned with, and worthily crowned, not only 
by the Muse w^ho inspired him to sing, but by the plain, 
simple country folk whom he sang, and who certainly 
knew whether he sang them truly or not. If ever poet 
reached the people, it was Allan Ramsay in The Gentle 
Shepherd. Whether Ramsay and Thomson were aware 
of the radical difference between their poetry and the 
poetry of the period, and were also aware of its signi- 
ficance as an intellectual movement, may fairly be 
questioned. That they had a circle of readers, and 
perhaps a large one, proves that they succeeded in 



INTRODUCTION. XVll 

awakening poetical curiosity, but nothing more. If 
their verse violated the existing canons of taste, it was 
from no deep-seated design on their part to overthrow 
those canons, but simply because their natural bent in 
writing happened to lie outside of them. If it had 
happened to lie within them, they would have followed 
it, — at any rate the lettered Thomson would have fol- 
lowed it, — as closely as Pope followed the artificial 
manner that he inherited from Dryden. Still they 
were not without influence upon English Verse, for 
tracing its main stream as it meanders along lazily 
through the eighteenth century we detect from time to 
time the pulsation of fresh currents therein. We are 
conscious of them in Somerville's Chace (1735), Shen- 
stone's Schoolmistress (1742), Thomson's Castle of Indo- 
lence (1748), and Gray's Elegy (1751). Whether the 
contemporary readers of these poems compared them 
with other poems of the time, and accepted them, or 
rejected them, as they happened to like or dislike 
them, we have no positive means of knowing, for with 
the exception of the Elegy, which at once established 
itself in popular favor, they excited no critical com- 
ment. We find them in a poetic literature to which 
they are dissimilar, and we conclude that a change 
has come over this literature which accounts for their 
dissimilarity, and that they represent this change, 
whether they originated it or not. One need but 
glance at the history of English Verse to see that it 
was not the same in the seventeenth century as in the 
eighteenth, and that it was not quite the same in the 
second quarter of the latter as in the first. The deca- 
dence of the spirit of false classicism began with Thom- 



XVlll INTRODUCTION. 

son's Winter, and closed with Cowper's Task. What 
the English poets learned in the intervening half cen- 
tury was to discard the practice of Pope and Boileau, 
who compounded poetry as apothecaries compounded 
medicines, after authoritative recipes, and trust to 
nature. They learned to shut their books, and look 
into themselves. 

There was one book, however, of w^hich they did not 
think much, but which was read with pleasure and 
profit by their children, and that was Percy's Reliques. 
Scott always remembered the spot where he read the 
volumes for the first time. It was beneath a huge 
plantanus-tree, in the ruins of what had been intended 
for an old-fashioned arbor in the garden of his Aunt 
Janet at Kelso. " The summer day sped onward so 
fast that, notwithstanding the sharp appetite of thir- 
teen, I forgot the hour of dinner, was sought for w4th 
anxiety, and was still found entranced in my intellectual 
banquet. To read and to remember was in this in- 
stance the same thing, and henceforth I overwhelmed 
my school-fellows, and all who would hearken to me, 
with tragical recitations from the ballads of Bishop 
Percy. The first time, too, I could scrape a few shil- 
lings together, which were not common occurrences 
with me, I bought unto myself a copy of these beloved 
volumes ; nor do I believe I ever read a book half so 
frequently, or with half the enthusiasm." Another 
English poet, whose family was settled in the reign of 
Edward the Third at Peniston, near Doncaster, the 
scene of the combat described in The Dragon of Want- 
ley, and one of whose ancestors w^as stated in the Notes 
to have been a cousin of the Dragon (Sir Francis 



INTRODUCTION. XIX 

Wortley), Wordsworth maintained that the Reliques 
were next in importance in English Verse to Thom- 
son's Seasons, and pointed out in one of his Prefaces 
that while Dr. Johnson and the little senate to which 
he gave laws succeeded in making them an object of 
contempt, Burger and other able writers of Germany 
were translating, or imitating them, and composing, 
with the aid of the inspiration thence derived, ballads 
which were the delight of the German nation. They 
were read with avidity by Biirger in his young man- 
hood, as well as by the Gottingen circle of poets with 
whom he was affiliated, and their influence was mani- 
fest in his ballads, notably in EUenore, which was 
published only nine years later than the Reliques, and 
at once became popular. If the old ballads in Percy 
inspired Biirger to write this ballad, a translation of 
this ballad, which was read in manuscript by Mrs. 
Barbauld at a party in Edinburgh, and of which Scott 
learned through the imperfect recollection of a friend 
who had heard it, inspired him to obtain the original, 
and to spend a night in translating it himself, and by 
awakening his early love of poetry, and with it the 
ambition to excel therein, made him a poet. He 
crossed the invisible threshold between the world of 
Prose and the world of Verse in his twenty-sixth year 
(1796), bearing in his hands a thin quarto containing 
his translation of two of Biirger's ballads, Ellenore, 
which he Englished into Lenore, and The Wild Hunts- 
man. That there was poetic vitality in the prosaic 
eighteenth century was proved by the Reliques, which 
were followed in England by twenty-eight similar col- 
lections before the century closed, and by the profound 



XX INTRODUCTION. 

impression they made in Germany, where they helped 
to create a school of balladists. What they were to 
Scott in his boyhood he has told us. What they were 
to him in his early manhood, when they were recalled 
to his memory by the ballads of Burger, his transla- 
tions from Biirger show us. What they were to him 
at a later period we see by turning to his poetical 
writings, and noting the order in which they were 
written. After the Biirger ballads he wrote, within 
the next three years, the ballads of Glenfinlas, The Eve 
of St. John, The Grey Brothers, and translated The 
Fire King. Then came the Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
Border, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, 
The Lady of the Lake, Rokeby, The Lord of the 
Isles, and, latest of all, Harold the Dauntless. The 
literary inspiration of these writings was the old bal- 
lads collected by Bishop Percy and his successors, and 
the old metrical romances of which some of these bal- 
lads were undoubtedly reminiscences, while others may 
have been the original germs. We have in Scott the 
last of the race of English and Scottish balladists, the 
last of the kings of song and story, — lords paramount 
of the enchanted world of Romance. He is the Lau- 
reate of Chivalry. 

Another English poet, of whom we have already 
spoken, and whom we usually associate with the im- 
mortals of the nineteenth century, appeared, like 
Scott, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, 
but, unlike Scott, in the livery which the lackeys of 
Pope had worn threadbare. Wordsworth's first poet- 
ical ventures, which were published three years before 
Scott's translations from Biirger, were An Evening 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

Walk — an attempt to paint a series of landscape views 
in his own country, and Descriptive Sketches, an at- 
tempt to paint the scenery of the Alps, among which 
he had lately made a pedestrian tour with a college 
friend. The most that can be said of these produc- 
tions is that they are fairly well written, and that there 
are touches of natural description in them w^iich could 
only have been the result of actual observation. A 
copy of the Descriptive Sketches fell into the hands of 
a young man in Cambridge, who was charmed with 
them, and w^ho declared years afterward that seldom, if 
ever, was the emergence of an original poetic genius 
above the literary horizon more evidently announced 
than in these same Sketches. This young man was a 
poet himself, and about this time was writing Songs to 
the Pixies, verses on Roses, and Kisses, an Address to 
a Young Ass, and other little pieces. Being in love, 
or debt, or both, he suddenly left college, and went up 
to London, where he was soon reduced to want. To 
alleviate this prosaic misfortune, he enlisted as a pri- 
vate in the 15th Light Dragoons, which were then 
stationed at Reading, and during his four months* con- 
tinuance in the awkward squad it is hard to say which 
was the most to be pitied, — he, or his horse. A chance 
recognition in the street made his whereabouts known 
to his family, who procured his release. Two or three 
months later he went to Oxford, w^here he made the 
acquaintance of another poet, whom he met again 
at Bristol, and by whom he was introduced to a 
third poet, who had recently taken to himself a wife, 
which wife had two pretty unmarried sisters, of one of 
whom he became at once enamored, his friend being 



XXll INTRODUCTION. 

enamored of the other. This trio of poets was Robert 
Southey, Robert Lovell, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 
Southey made love to his Edith, and Coleridge to his 
Sarah, and in the intervals of that delightful employ- 
ment both made love to the Muse, joining their forces, 
such as they were then, in the composition of a con- 
temporary drama. The Fall of Robespierre, which got 
into print in 1794. In the same year Southey published 
a volume of Poems, in conjunction with his friend 
Lovell, and in the following year the first of his epics, 
Joan of Arc, which he believed to be the most impor- 
tant addition to English Verse since Glover's Leonidas, 
which was given to the world about sixty years before. 
Stimulated by an offer of thirty guineas from Cottle, 
another poet, Coleridge collected his Address to a 
Young Ass, his verses on Roses, and Kisses, and other 
juvenilia, and published them as Poems in 1796. A 
second edition, which was reached in the next year, 
contained additions by two of his tuneful friends, 
Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd. Four years had 
elapsed since Wordsworth published his Descriptive 
Sketches, and he had not been idle during that time, 
though he had printed nothing. He had written 
several poems, among them Guilt and Sorrow, and a 
tragedy called The Borderers. In the summer of 1797 
he was visited at Racedown by Coleridge, who repeated 
to him and his sister Dorothy, after tea, two acts and 
a half of a tragedy he had in hand, and to whom the 
next morning he read the whole five acts of his own 
tragedy. A visit with his sister to Coleridge, at Nether- 
Stowey, in tlie autumn, led to a little tour in the 
neighborhood, and as their united funds were very 



INTRODUCTION. XXlll 

small, the two poets agreed to defray the expense of 
the tour by writing a poem. They set off along the 
Quantock Hills, and in the course of their walk the 
poem was planned, Coleridge supplying the story 
which was to be narrated, and Wordsworth suggest- 
ing the crime upon which it should hinge, and which 
was to be punished in the spiritual suffering of the 
hero. They began it the same evening, but did not 
proceed far before they discovered that their respec- 
tive manners could not be successfully combined, and 
Wordsworth withdrew from the undertaking. They 
continued their tour, the poem growing in the mean- 
time until it became too important for their first ob- 
ject, which was limited to their expectation of five 
pounds, so they began to think of waiting a volume, 
which was to consist of poems chiefly on supernatural 
subjects, taken from common life, and looked at, as 
much as might be, through an imaginative medium. 
The poem thus conceived was The Ancient Mariner, 
and the volume thus projected was the Lyrical 
Ballads. Looking back upon the eighteenth century 
now we can distinguish therein four great years, four 
years that are memorable in the history of English 
Verse, years in which old elements were discarded and 
new elements introduced, in which the old order 
yielded, giving place to new — the years in which 
Thomson published his Winter (1726), Gray the Elegy 
(175 1), Cowper The Task (1785), and Wordsworth and 
Coleridge the Lyrical Ballads (1798). The year that 
witnessed the publication, in the same volume, of The 
Ancient Mariner, and Lines written a few miles above 
Tintern Abbey, was the annus jnirabiiis. 



XXIV INTRODUCTION. 

The prospects of English Verse were prosperous 
when the nineteenth century opened. Dispirited and 
benumbed during the greater part of the eighteenth 
century, it had shaken off the fetters which had been 
imposed upon it, and rousing as its energies were 
awakened had revoked and declared its freedom. It 
was attended by four torch-bearers, Southey, who was 
in his twenty-sixth year, Coleridge, who was in his 
twenty-eighth year, Scott, who was in his twenty-ninth 
year, and Wordsworth, who was in his thirtieth year. 
To these should be added three link-boys, who were 
younger, Campbell being twenty-seven, Landor twen- 
ty-five, and Moore twenty-one. Behind these, uncon- 
scious of their future renown, the imagination sees 
three bright, eager-eyed lads, George Gordon Byron, 
who was twelve, Percy Bysshe Shelley, the son of a 
country baronet, who was eight, and John Keats, the 
son of the head servant of a livery-stable keeper, who 
was five. Tracing the current of English Verse hither- 
ward from the beginning of the century, we find the 
four torch-bearers following the paths upon which 
they had already entered, — Southey, the path of the 
epic in Thalaba (iSoi), Madoc (1805), Curse of Kehema 
(1810), Roderick, the Last of the Goths (1814) ; Scott, 
the path of balladry, which soon broadened into the 
shining high-way of the metrical romance, in The 
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-3), The Lay of 
the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), The Lady 
of the Lake (1810), Vision of Don Roderick (181 1), 
Rokeby (1812), The Bridal of Triermain (1813), The 
Lord of the Isles (1815), Harold the Dauntless (1817) ; 
Wordsworth, the path of philosophic meditation and 



INTRODUCTION. XXV 

nature-worship in The Excursion (1814), The White Doe 
of Rylstone (1815), Peter Bell (1819), The Waggoner 
(1819) ; and Coleridge, the path of dramatic fantasy, in 
Christabel (1806), Remorse (1813), Sibylline Leaves 
(1816), and Zapolya (1816). Of the four, the one who 
made poetry the business of his life was the least pop- 
ular. Subversive of the conventional standard of taste, 
there were puerilities in his poetry which provoked 
derision, and an originality which was offensive. Such 
readers as he had, and they were not many, he made, 
and made slowly. What Coleridge might have become 
if, like Wordsworth, he could have devoted himself 
wholly to poetry, we can only conjecture ; that he had 
a richer nature and a more creative imagination can 
scarcely be doubted. As it was, however, he frittered 
away his time in dreaming and travelling, in preaching 
and lecturing, in writing for newspapers and project- 
ing periodicals, but chiefly in opium-eating. He had 
married his Sarah, who had borne him children, as his 
friend Southey had married his Edith, who had borne 
him children, and it was Southey's roof that sheltered 
the young Coleridges and their mother. With fewer 
poetic gifts than Coleridge, Southey contrived to thrive 
better, for while he composed his epics, which had no 
sale to speak of, he devised letters of travel, edited poets, 
translated romances of chivalry, wrote a Life of Nelson, 
a History of Brazil, a Book of the Church, and num- 
berless articles in the Quarterly Review. Reputation, 
which had been refused to Coleridge and Wordsworth, 
though a share of it had fallen to the lot of Southey, 
and the reward which follows reputation, often in the 
guise of its evil genius, — these things had been lavished 



XXVI INTRODUCTION. 

upon Scott as upon few English poets before. The 
greatest poet of the time in general estimation, he was 
the most in demand among the Trade, for he had the 
rare art of coining money for them as well as for him- 
self. Scott's reign as the monarch of English Verse 
in the nineteenth century was brilliant but brief, for 
in its seventh year his power was shaken by a young 
lord of twenty-four, whose claim to the sovereignty 
was a poem called Childe Harold. He abdicated grace- 
fully, carrying the sceptre with which he had ruled over 
the world of metrical romance into the greater world 
of historical prose romance, which he discovered, and 
in which his genius still reigns supreme. Nowhere 
in the history of letters do we find a career like that 
of Byron, nowhere so powerful a personality as his. 
He was what Marlowe might have been but for that 
fatal tavern brawl — the possessor of all poetic gifts, 
except that instinctive knowledge of mankind which 
was Shakespeare's, and that reverence for moral great- 
ness which was Milton's, — a swift and glorious Spirit, 
an elemental Force in English Verse. Belonging to 
the same race of high intelligences, but of a different 
order, was Shelley, who was of too ethereal a mould 
for the material England of the Georges. He had the 
heart of a woman, or a child, — the heart which suffer- 
ing first moves to pity, then to anger, and then stings 
to the unreason which clamors against the Maker of a 
world in which such suffering exists. He confounded 
religion with priestcraft, and kingcraft with the human 
imperfection of the laws it administered, and would 
have abolished both, and put man back once more in a 
state of nature, wh^ch, poet-like, he peopled with all 



INTRODUCTION. XXVll 

the civic virtues. A chartered libertine in his beliefs, 
the soul of goodness shone through his life and his 
work, than which there is none more imaginative in 
English Verse. More purely poetical than either w^as 
Keats, who, without learning, revived the spirit of the 
Greek pastoral in Endymion, and the spirit of the 
Greek tragedy in Hyperion, and summoned back as 
w^ith the wand of an enchanter the light and loveliness 
of the Middle Ages in The Eve of St. Agnes. His 
masters were Chaucer, Spenser, and the Shakespeare 
of the Sonnets, and their pupil was worthy of them. 
One's first thought, when he remembers that he died 
in his twenty-seventh year, is, that he died young ; but 
when one remembers what his life was, with what 
scorn his poetry was received, and how he was tortured 
by a hopeless passion, one cannot but change his mind, 
and say, with old Bosola in the Duchess of Malfy, 

" I think not so ; his infelicity 
Seemed to have years too many." 



Of the later nineteenth century poets, successors of 
Keats, Shelley, and Byron, born in their lifetime, but 
not singing until the grave had closed over them, — 
the perfect poet who has restored to us the gracious 
Arthur from his long slumber in the island valley 
of Avilion ; the subtle dramatist who has poured his 
own heart's blood into Sebald and Ottima, Colombe 
and Valence, and a score of other live men and women ; 
the tender and pensive singer, who has created an 
Earthly Paradise for the immortal stories that he loves 
so well, and that we love, too ; the fiery, impassioned 



XXVlll INTRODUCTION. 

improvisator, dramatist at once and lyrist, who has 
plucked out the heart of Mary Stuart's secret, and 
snatched the light and sound of the sea ; of these, and 
others, all that a contemporary should say, — and he 
cannot say less, — was said by Keats in the first line of 
the second sonnet that he addressed to Haydon : 

** Great spirits now on earth are sojourning." 

R. H. Stoddard. 

The Century, 

New York, September 20, 1883. 



^\ The Editors and Publishers of English Verse cordially 
acknowledge the kindness which has allowed them to print in it 
many poems, which could be so included only by authority of 
the owners of the American copyrights. The permission has 
been willingly granted in every case ; and it is through this 
kind co-operation that it has been possible to make thoroughly 
comprehensive a Collection which must otherwise have been 
unduly limited in the field of Afnerican poetry. Besides their 
indebtedtiess to the living American authors whose names 
appear in these volumes, they desire to express their thanks to 
Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for their consetit to the 
use of many poejns from the long list of poets of whose works 
they are the publishers ; to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for 
the use of poetns by Bryant ; to Messrs. Roberts Brothers 
^«^ James R. Osgood & Co. ; to Messrs. J. B. Lippincott 
& Co. ; and to Messrs A. C. Armstrong & Son. 



CONTENTS. 



William Wordsworth : page 

Invocation to the Power of Sound I 

Ode to Duty 7 

Nature's Darling 9 

The Triad lo 

Natural Piety 17 

Sonnets {It is a beauteotcs evening) 17 

( This world is too much with us) 17 

(O Vr the wide earth) 18 

( There is a bondage) 18 

{Methought I saw) 19 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge : 

Genevieve 19 

Names 22 

To a Young Ass 23 

Love and Hope and Patience in Education 24 

Youth and Age 25 

Robert Southey : 

The Holly Tree 26 

The Scholar 28 

Robert Tannahill: 

Love's Fear 28 

Mine ain dear Somebody 29 

Sir Walter Scott : 

The Clan-Gathering 30 

Jock o' Hazeldean 31 



XXXll CONTENTS. 

Sir Walter Scott : page 

Light Love 32 

Death-Chant 33 

Proud Maisie 33 

James Montgomery: 

The Blackbird 34 

Winter Lightning 35 

James Hogg: 

To the Lark , 35 

Maggie away 36 

Charles Lamb : 

Hester 37 

The Old Familiar Faces 38 

The Gipsy's Malison 39 

Walter Savage Landor : 

To Hesperus 40 

Rubies 41 

The Nereid , 41 

The Maid's Lament 42 

Margaret 43 

To Youth 43 

Erinna to Love 44 

Thomas Campbell : 

The Battle of the Baltic 44 

The Mariners of England 46 

Hallowed Ground 48 

Thomas Moore : 

Then fare Thee well ! 51 

Peace be around Thee ! 52 

Bring the bright Garlands ! 52 

Battle Song 53 

After Defeat S4 

Horace Smith : 

Hymn of the Flowers 55 



CONTENTS. XXXlU 

Ebenezer Elliott : page 

Flowers for the Heart 57 

The Bramble-Flower 58 

Elegy on William Cobbett 59 

Hannah Ratcliffe 60 

James Henry Leigh Hunt: 

Abou Ben Adhem 61 

Song of Peace 62 

A Nun 63 

Grasshopper and Cricket 63 

To his Wife 64 

To his Piano-forte 64 

Allan Cunningham : 

The Sun in France 65 

George Darley : 

Waking Song 66 

Sylvia's Song 66 

Dirge 67 

Thomas Love Peacock: 

Castles in the Air 68 

Days of Old 68 

Margaret Love Peacock 69 

Bryan Waller Procter : 

The Stormy Petrel 69 

To our Neighbour's Health 70 

Bacchanalian 72 

Song [Let us sing and sigh /) 73 

I love Him 73 

Ignorance is Bliss 74 

She was not Fair 74 

The Poet to his Wife 75 

Richard Henry Dana: 

The Little Beachbird 'jQ 

George Gordon Byron ; 

The Isles of Greece 'jj 

ToThyrza 80 



xxxiv CONTENTS. 

George Gordon Byron: page 

Song of Saul 82 

The Patriot 82 

She Walks in Beauty 83 

Byron's Last Verse 84 

Percy Bysshe Shelley : 

To a Skylark 85 

Lines to an Indian Air 88 

To Night 89 

A Bridal Song 90 

Song {False Friend!) 91 

Political Greatness 91 

A Wail 9a 

John Keats: 

Hymn to Pan 93 

Roundelay '. 94 

Ode on a Grecian Urn 98 

To Autumn 100 

Grasshopper and Cricket loi 

Charles Wolfe : 

The Burial of Sir John Moore 102 

Felicia Dorothea Hemans : 

Her Grave 103 

William Cullen Bryant: 

To a Water-Fowl 104 

To the Fringed Gentian 105 

Hymn of the City 106 

To the North Star 107 

The Third of November 108 

Thomas Carlyle : 

Adieu ! 109 

John Hamilton Reynolds: 

Hour after Hour 110 

Song ( Go where the water) HI 

Sherwood Forest iii 



CONTENTS. XXXV 

Hartley Coleridge: page 

Song {She is not /air) 112 

Whither ? 112 

William Motherwell: 

Jeanie Morrison , 113 

Thomas Hood : 

The Bridge of Sighs 116 

Ode to Autumn 119 

To a Cold Beauty 121 

Love's Constancy 122 

Ruth 122 

The Time of Roses 123 

Charles Wells : 

Song {Kiss no more the Vintages) 124 

Sir Henry Taylor: 

Song ( The morning broke) 125 

William Barnes: 

Not far to go 125 

My Fore-Elders 126 

John Henry Newman : 

The Elements 127 

A Voice from Afar 128 

Harriet Martineau : 

Beneath the Arch 129 

Thomas Lovell Beddoes : 

Song of the Stygian Naiads 130 

How many Times ? 131 

Sea Song 131 

Richard Hengist Horne : 

Genius 132 

The Laurel-Seed 133 

Sohtude and the Lily 134 



XXXVl CONTENTS. 

Richard Hengist Horne : page 

The Plough 13S 

Dirge 135 

Newton 136 

Ralph Waldo Emerson : 

The Problem 136 

To the Humble-Bee 138 

To Eva 140 

The Apology 141 

Gerald Griffin: 

In thy Memory 141 

Maiden Eyes 142 

James Clarence Mangan : 

Soul and Country 143 

Samuel Laman Blanchard : 

Nell Gwynne's Looking-Glass 144 

Robert Stephen Hawker: 

Isha Cherioth 146 

The Wail of the Cornish Mother 147 

Sarah Flower Adams : 

The Olive Boughs 148 

Sir William Rowan Hamilton: 

A Prayer 148 

Thomas Wade : 

The Net-Braiders 149 

Nymphs 150 

John Sterling : 

Daedalus 151 

William Gilmore Simms : 

The Lost Pleiad 153 



CONTENTS. XXXVll 

Nathaniel Parker Willis: page 

Two Women 155 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : 

The Arrow and the Song 156 

The Light of Stars 156 

The Cumberland 157 

Excelsior 159 

The Rainy Day 160 

Children 161 

John Greenleaf Whittier : 

In School-Days 162 

Telling the Bees 163 

Ichabod, , 165 

The River-Path 166 

Richard Chenevix Trench : 

The Lent Jewels 168 

Edgar Allan Poe : 

The Bells 169 

To Helen 172 

Oliver Wendell Holmes : 

The Chambered Nautilus 173 

Alfred Tennyson : 

Tithonus 174 

Mariana 176 

The Poet's Song 179 

The Days that are no more 179 

Richard Monckton Milnes: 

The Brook-Side iCo 

The Treasure Ship 181 

William Makepeace Thackeray: 

At the Church Gate 182 

The Age of Wisdom • . ' Z^ 



XXXVlll CONTENTS. 

Sir Francis Hastings Doylb: page 

The Private of the Buffs 184 

Alfred Domett : 

What matter ? 185 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning : 

A Musical Instrument 186 

A False Step 187 

The Sea-Mew 188 

Sonnets ( Unlike are we) 189 

{ Go from me !) 190 

{Say over again /) 190 

{First time he kiss'd me) 191 

Robert Browning : 

The Lost Leader 191 

The Moth's Kiss 192 

Evelyn Hope 193 

Night and Morning 194 

Robert Nicoll: 

Bonnie Bessie Lee , 195 

Menie 196 

The Grave of Burns 196 

Thomas Osborne Davis: 

The Welcome 197 

William Bell Scott : 

The Norns watering Yggdrasill 198 

Parting and Meeting again 200 

Pygmalion 200 

Rose-Leaves 201 

William James Linton: 

Bridal Song 201 

The Happy Land 202 

Iphigeneia at Aulis 203 



CONTENTS. XXXIX 

Aubrey Thomas de Vere : page 

Song {Seek not the tree) 203 

Sorrow 204 

Song {Love laid down) 205 

{Softly, O midnight Hours /) 205 

Nothing more 206 

Thomas Burbidge : 

Love's Insistence 206 

Charles George Rosenberg : 

The Winged Horse 207 

Henry Septimus Sutton : 

The Battle of God 210 

Charles Weldon: 

The Poem of the Universe 211 

Arthur Hugh Clough : 

Peschiera 211 

Not unavailing 213 

Julia Ward Howe : 

Battle Hymn of the Republic 213 

Walt Whitman : 

Pioneers 214 

The Soldier's Letter 219 

Thomas William Parsons : 

Dirge 221 

Saint Peray 221 

Charles Kingsley : 

To ^\jt North-East Wind 224 

The Sands of Dee 226 

A Hope 227 

Mary Ann Evans Lewes : 

The Dark 227 



Xl CONTENTS. j 

I 

James Russell Lowell : page 1 

Hebe 228 | 

The Courtin' 229 I 

The Fountain 232 I 

She Came and Went 233 j 

j 

Maria White Lowell : j 

An Opium Fantasy 233 j 

William Ross Wallace : j 

El Amin— The Faithful 235 ! 

Ebenezer Jones: ' 

Rain 237 j 

When the World is burning 237 1 

Denis Florence McCarthy : \ 

Summer Longings > 238 

Frederick Locker : ; 

The Unrealized Ideal , 240 . | 

Alice Cary : 

Open Secrets 240 j 

Phcebe Cary: '; 

The Maiden's Song 241 , 

Alas ! 242 I 

i 

Matthew Arnold : i 

Philomela 243 

Growing Old 244 

William (Johnson) Cory : 

Mimnermus in Church 245 ' 

A French Sailor's Scottish Sweetheart 246 \ 

Sydney Thompson Dobell : ; 

A Sleep Song , 246 

How's my Boy ? n8 ; 



CONTENTS. Xli 

Henry Howard Brownell : page 

The Burial of the Dane 249 

Qu'il mourut ! 251 

George William Curtis: 

Song [Rtishes leati over) 251 

Major and Minor 252 

Thomas d'Arcy McGee : 

The Penitent Raven 252 

Bayard Taylor : 

The Wisdom of All 253 

Bedouin Song 255 

The Arab to the Palm 256 

Richard Henry Stoddard : 

Brahma's Answer 257 

A Jar of Wine 259 

Under the Rose 259 

Elizabeth Drew Barstow Stoddard : 

Mercedes 260 

Adelaide Anne Procter : 

A Woman's Questioning 261 

Lucy Larcom : 

SIcep-Song 262 

Mortimer Collins : 

Snow and Sun 263 

William Allingham : 

The Touchstone 264 

Arthur Joseph Munby: 

Violet 265 

Mary Anerley 267 



xlii CONTENTS. 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti : rAcs 

The Card-Dealer 268 

First Love remembered 270 

Lilith 270 

True Woman 271 

Lost Days 271 

Christina Georgina Rossetti : 

Song ( IV^en I am dead) 272 

The Bourne 272 

Jean Ingelow : 

Expecting 273 

Edmund Clarence Stedman : 

The Doorstep 274 

Toujours Amour.. 275 

Mine 276 

George Arnold : 

Gloria 277 

John Nichol: 

Impatience 278 

Lewis Morris : 

Love's Suicide 279 

Helen Fiske Jackson : 

Coronation 280 

William Morris : 

Song {Fair is the night) 281 

Before our Lady came 282 

John James Piatt : 

The Old Man and the Spring-Leaves 284 

Celia Leighton Thaxter : 

Medrake and Osprey 285 



CONTENTS. xliii 

Byron Forceythe Willson : page 

The Estray 286 

Autumn-Song 287 

William Winter : 

Love's Queen 287 

After all 288 

The Last Scene 289 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich : 

Palabras Cariiiosas 290 

Tiger-Lilies 290 

Richard Garnett: 

Violets 2gi 

Fading Leaf and Fallen Leaf 293 

Thomas Ashe : 

Dallying 292 

Algernon Charles Swinburne : 

Before the Mirror 293 

Chorus — from Atalanta in Calydon 295 

The Sundew 297 

Rondel 298 

James Thomson : 

The Three that shall be One 299 

Waiting 301 

John Hay: 

A Woman's Love 302 

Henry Austin Dobson : 

Before Sedan 303 

Robert Williams Buchanan : 

The Modern Warrior 304 

Robert Bridges: 

The Sea-Poppy 307 



xliv CONTENTS. 

Edmund William Gosse : page 

The Suppliant 308 

Theophile Marzials : 

Rondel 308 

Pakenham Thomas Beatty : 

In my Dreams 309 

Andrew Lang : 

In Ithaca 309 

William Davies : 

Doing and Being 310 

Notes 311 

Index to First Lines ; 329 



LYRICS 



XIX™ CENTURY 



Song should breathe of scents and flowers ; 

Song should like a river flow ; 
Song should bring back scenes and hours 

That we loved — ah ! long ago. 

Song from baser thoughts should win us ; 

Song should charm us out of woe ; 
Song should stir the heart within us, 

Like a patriot's friendly blow. 

Pains and pleasures, all man doeth, 

War and peace, and right and wrong, 
All things that the soul subdueth 

Should be vanquish'd too by Song. 

Song should spur the mind to duty, 

Nerve the weak, and stir the strong ; 
Every deed of truth and beauty 

Should be crown'd by starry Song. 

Barry Cornwall, 



Lyrics of the XlXth Century. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

1770— 1850. 



INVOCATION. 

TO THE POWER OF SOUND. 

Thy functions are ethereal, 

As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind, 

Organ of Vision ! And a Spirit aerial 

Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind : 

Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought 

To enter than oracular cave : 

Strict passage, through which sighs are brought, 

And whispers for the heart, their slave ; 

And shrieks that revel in abuse 

Of shivering flesh ; and warbled air, 

Whose piercing sweetness can unloose 

The chains of frenzy or entice a smile 

Into the ambush of despair ; 

Hozannas pealing down the long-drawn aisle ; 

And requiems answer'd by the pulse that beats 

Devoutly in life's last retreats. 

The headlong streams and fountains 
Serve thee ! Invisible Spirit ! with untired powers : 
Cheering the wakeful tent on Syrian mountains, 
They lull perchance ten thousand thousand flowers. 
That roar, the prowling lion's '' Here I am ! " 
II.— I 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

How fearful to the desert wide ! 

That bleat, how tender ! of the dam 

Calling a straggler to her side. 

Shout, cuckoo ! let the vernal soul 

Go with thee to the frozen zone ; 

Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird ! toll, 

At the still hour to Mercy dear : 

Mercy from her twilight throne 

Listening to nun's faint throb of holy fear. 

To sailor's prayer breathed from a darkening sea, 

Or widow's cottage-lullaby. 

Ye Voices ! and ye Shadows 

And Images of Voice, to hound and horn 

From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows 

Flung back and in the sky's blue caves reborn ! 

On with your pastime, till the church-tower bells 

A greeting give of measured glee ; 

And milder Echoes from their cells 

Repeat the bridal symphony. 

Then, or far earlier, let us rove 

Where mists are breaking up or gone, 

And from aloft look down into a cove 

Besprinkled with a careless quire : 

Happy milkmaids, one by one 

Scattering a ditty each to her desire,— r- 

A liquid concert matchless by nice art, 

A stream as if from one full heart. 

Bless'd be the song that brightens 

The blind man's gloom, exalts the veteran's mirth ! 

Unscorn'd the peasant's whistling breath that lightens 

His duteous toil of furrowing the green earth ! 

For the tired slave Song lifts the languid oar, 

And bids it aptly fall, with chime 

That beautifies the fairest shore 

And mitigates the harshest clime. 

Yon pilgrims see ! — in lagging file 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

They move ; but soon the appointed way 

A choral " Ave, Marie ! " shall beguile, 

And to their hope the distant shrine 

Glisten with a livelier ray. 

Nor friendless he, the prisoner of the mine. 

Who from the well-spring of his own clear breast 

Can draw, and sing his griefs to rest. 

When civic renovation 

Dawns on a kingdom, and for needful haste 

Best eloquence avails not. Inspiration 

Mounts with a tune that travels like a blast, 

Piping through cave and battlemented tower : 

Then starts the sluggard, pleased to meet 

That voice of Freedom in its power 

Of promises, shrill, wild and sweet. 

Who from a martial pageant spreads 

Incitements of a battle-day. 

Thrilling the unweapon'd crowd with plumeless heads ? 

Even She whose Lydian airs inspire 

Peaceful striving, gentle play 

Of timid hope and innocent desire 

Shot from the dancing Graces as they move 

Fann'd by the plausive wings of Love. 

How oft along thy mazes. 

Regent of Sound ! have dangerous passions trod. 

O thou ! through whom the temple rings with praises, 

And blackening clouds in thunder speak of God, 

Betray not by the cozenage of sense 

Thy votaries, wooingly resign'd 

To a voluptuous influence 

That taints the purer, better mind ; 

But lead sick Fancy to a harp 

That hath in noble tasks been tried ! 

And, if the virtuous feel a pang too sharp. 

Soothe it into patience ! — stay 

The uplifted arm of Suicide ; 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

And let some mood of thine in firm array 
Knit every thought the impending issue needs, 
Ere martyr burns or patriot bleeds ! 

As Conscience to the centre 

Of Being smites with irresistible pain, 

So shall a solemn cadence, if it enter 

The mouldy vaults of the dull idiot's brain, 

Transmute him to a wretch from quiet hurl'd. 

Convulsed as by a jarring din ; 

And then aghast, as at the world 

Of reason partially let in 

By concords winding with a sway 

Terrible for sense and soul : 

Or awed he weeps, struggling to quell dismay. 

Point not these mysteries to an art, 

Lodged above the starry pole ? 

Pure modulations flowing from the heart 

Of Divine Love, where Wisdom, Beauty, Truth, 

With Order, dwell in endless youth. 

Oblivion may not cover 

All treasures hoarded by the miser Time. 

Orphean Insight ! Truth's undaunted lover. 

To the first leagues of tutor'd passion climb, 

When Music deign'd within this grosser sphere 

Her subtle essence to enfold, 

And voice and shell drew forth a tear 

Softer than Nature's self could mould. 

Yet strenuous was the infant age : 

Art, daring because souls could feel, 

Stirr'd nowhere but an urgent equipage 

Of rapt imagination sped her march 

Through the realms of woe and weal : 

Hell to the lyre bow'd low ; the upper arch 

Rejoiced that clamorous spell and magic verse 

Her wan disasters could disperse. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

The Gift to King Amphion, 

That wall'd a city with its melody, 

Was for belief no dream. Thy skill, Arion ! 

Could humanize the creatures of the sea, 

Where men were monsters : a last grace he craves, 

Leave for one chant ; the dulcet sound 

Steals from the deck o'er willing waves, 

And listening dolphins gather round ; 

Self-cast, as with a desperate course 

'Mid that strange audience, he bestrides 

A proud One docile as a managed horse, 

And singing, while the accordant hand 

Sweeps his harp, the Master rides ; 

So shall he touch at length a friendly strand, 

And he with his preserver shine star-bright 

In memory, through silent night. 

The pipe of Pan to shepherds 

Couch'd in the shadow of Ma^nalian pines 

Was passing sweet ; the eyeballs of the leopards 

That in high triumph drew the Lord of Vines, 

How did they sparkle to the cymbals' clang ! 

While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground 

In cadence, and Silenus swang 

This way and that, with wild-flowers crown'd. 

To life, to life give back thine ear ! 

Ye, who are longing to be rid 

Of fable though to truth subservient ! hear 

The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell 

Echoed from the coffin-lid ; 

The convict's summons in the steeple's knell ; 

The vain distress-gun, from a leeward shore 

Repeated, heard, — and heard no more. 

For terror, joy, or pity, 

Vast is the compass and the swell of notes : 

From the babe's first cry to voice of regal city 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Rolling a solemn sea-like bass, that floats 

Far as the woodlands, with the trill to blend 

Of that shy songstress whose love-tale 

Might tempt an angel to descend 

While hovering o'er the moonlight vale. 

Ye wandering Utterances ! has earth no scheme, 

No scale of moral music, to unite 

Powers that survive but in the faintest dream 

Of memory ? O that ye might stoop to bear 

Chains, such precious chains of sight 

As labour'd minstrelsies through ages wear ! 

O for a balance fit the truth to tell 

Of the Unsubstantial, ponder'd well ! 

By one pervading spirit 

Of tones and numbers all things are controul'd : 

As sages taught, where faith was found to merit 

Initiation in that mystery old. 

The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still 

As they themselves appear to be, 

Innumerable voices fill 

With everlasting harmony ; 

The towering headlands, crown'd with mist. 

Their feet among the billows, know 

That Ocean is a mighty harmonist ; 

Thy pinions, universal Air ! 

Ever waving to and fro. 

Are delegates of harmony, and bear 

Strains that support the Seasons in their round : 

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound. 



Ye banded instruments of wind and chords ! 
Unite, to magnify the Ever-living, 
Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words ! 
Nor hush'd be service from the lowing mead; 
Nor mute the forest hum of noon ! 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Thou too be heard, lone eagle ! freed 

From snowy peak and cloud, attune 

Thy hungry barkings to the hymn 

Of joy that from her utmost walls 

The Six-days' Work by flaming Seraphim 

Transmits to Heaven. As Deep to Deep 

Shouting through one valley calls, 

All worlds, all natures mood and measure keep 

For praise and ceaseless gratulation, pour'd 

Into the ear of God, their Lord. 

A Voice to light gave being, 

To Time, and Man, his earth-born chronicler ; 

A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing. 

And sweep away life's visionary stir : 

The trumpet (we intoxicate with pride 

Arm at its blast for deadly wars), 

To archangelic lips applied. 

The grave shall open, quench the stars. 

O Silence ! are Man's noisy years 

No more than moments of thy life ? 

Is Harmony, bless'd queen of smiles and tears. 

With her smooth tones and discords just 

Temper'd into rapturous strife. 

Thy destined bond-slave ? No ! though earth be dust 

And vanish, though the heavens dissolve, her stay 

Is in The Word, that shall not pass away. 



ODE TO DUTY. 

Stern daughter of the Voice of God : ! 

O Duty ! if that name thou love ^ 

Who art a light to guide, a rod \ 

To check the erring, and reprove ! I 

Thou who art victory and law I 

When empty terrors overawe ; \ 

\ 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

From vain temptations dost set free, 
And calm'st the weary strife of frail Humanity ! 

There are who ask not if thine eye 
Be on them : who in love and truth, 
Where no misgiving is, rely 
Upon the genial sense of youth. 
Glad Hearts ! without reproach or blot, 
Who do thy work and know it not : 
Long may the kindly impulse last ! 
But thou, if they should totter, teach them to stand fast ! 

Serene will be our days and bright. 
And happy will our nature be, 
When love is an unerring light. 
And joy its own security : 
And they a blissful course may hold 
Even now, who, not unwisely bold, 
Live in the spirit of this creed, 
Yet find that other strength, according to their need. 

I, loving freedom, and untried, 
No sport of every random gust, 
Yet being to myself a guide. 
Too blindly have reposed my trust ; 
And oft, when in my heart was heard 
Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd 
The task, in smoother walks to stray : 
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. 

Through no disturbance of my soul 
Or strong compunction in me wrought 
I supplicate for thy controul, 
But in the quietness of thought : 
Me this uncharter'd freedom tries, 
I feel the weight of chance desires. 
My hopes no more must change their name ; 
I long for a repose that ever is the same. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 9 

Stern Law-giver ! Yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon ihy face : 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 
And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh 
and strong. 

To humble, functions, awful Power ! 
I call thee : I myself commend 
Unto thy guidance from this hour. 
O, let my weakness have an end ! 
Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
The confidence of reason give ; 
And in the light of Truth thy Bondman let me live ! 

NATURE'S DARLING. 

Three years she grew in sun and shower : 
Then Nature said — A lovelier flower 

On earth was never sown : 
This Child I to myself will take ; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A Lady of my own. 

Myself will to my darling be 

Both law and impulse ; and with me 

The Girl, in rock and plain, 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bovver, 
Shall feel an overseeing power, 

To kindle or restrain. 



She shall be sportive as the fawn 
That wild with glee across the lawn 
Or up the mountain springs ; 



lO WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
And hers the silence and the calm 
Of mute insensate things. 

The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her ; for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the Maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her ; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
And beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 

Her virgin bosom swell : 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 
While she and I together live 

Here in this happy dell. — 

Thus Nature spake : the work was done. 
How soon my Lucy's race was run ! 

She died : and left to me 
This health, this calm, and quiet scene. 
The memory of what has been. 

And never more will be. 

THE TRIAD. 

Show me the noblest Youth of present time 
Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth ; 
Some God, or Hero from the Olympian clime 
Return'd to seek a Consort upon earth ! 
Or, in no doubtful prospect, let me see 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTFI. II 

The brightest Star of ages yet to be ! 
And I will mate and match him blissfully. 

I will not fetch a Naiad from a flood 

Pure as herself (Song lacks not mightier power), 

Nor leaf-crown'd Dryad from a pathless wood, 

Nor Sea-Nymph glistening from her coral bower : 

Mere Mortals, bodied forth in vision, still 

Shall with Mount Ida's triple lustre fill 

The chaster coverts of a British hill. 

Appear ! obey my lyre's command ! 

Come, like the Graces, hand in hand! 

For ye, though not by birth allied, 

Are Sisters in the bond of love ; 

Nor shall the tongue of envious pride 

Presume those interweavings to reprove 

In you, which that fair progeny of Jove 

Learn'd from the tuneful spheres that glide 

In endless union earth and sea above. 

— I sing in vain : — the pines have hush'd their waving .• 

A peerless Youth expectant at my side, 

Breathless as they, with unabated craving 

Looks to the earth and to the vacant air 

And, with a wandering eye that seems to chide. 

Asks of the clouds what occupants they hide. 

But why solicit more than sight could bear | 

By casting on a moment all we dare ? j 

Invoke we those bright Beings, one by one ! | 

And what was boldly promised truly shall be done. \ 

"\ 
Fear not a constraining measure ! i 

— Yielding to this gentle spell, ] 

Lucida ! from domes of pleasure, J 

Or from cottage-sprinkled dell, .^ 

Come to regions solitary l 

Where the eagle builds her aery ] 

Above the hermit's long- forsaken cell ! i, 



12 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

She comes ! Behold 
That Figure, Hke a ship with snow-white sail ! 
Nearer she draws ; a breeze uplifts her veil ; 
Upon her coming wait 
As pure a sunshine and as soft a gale 
As e'er on herbage covering earthly mould 
Tempted the bird of Juno to unfold 
His richest splendour, when his veering gait 
And every motion of his starry train 
Seem governed by a strain 
Of music, audible to him alone. 

O Lady ! worthy of earth's proudest throne, 

Nor less, by excellence of nature, fit 

Beside an unambitious hearth to sit, 

Domestic queen, where grandeur is unknown : 

What living man could fear 

The worst of Fortune's malice wert Thou near. 

Humbling that lily-stem, thy sceptre meek, 

That its fair flowers may from his cheek 

Brush the too happy tear ? 

Queen and handmaid lowly ! 

Whose skill can speed the day with lively cares. 

And banish melancholy 

By all that mind invents or hand prepares : 

O Thou ! against whose lip, without its smile, 

And in its silence even, no heart is proof ; 

Whose goodness, sinking deep, would reconcile 

The softest nursling of a gorgeous palace 

To the bare life beneath the hawthorn roof 

Of Sherwood's Archer, or in caves of Wallace : 

Who that hath seen thy beauty could content 

His soul with but a glimpse of heavenly day ? 

W^ho that hath loved thee but would lay 

His strong hand on the Wind if it were bent 

To take thee in thy majesty away ? 

— Pass onward ! Even the glancing deer 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1 3 

Till we depart intrude not here : 

That mossy slope, o'er which the woodbine throws 

A canopy, is smoothed for thy repose. 

Glad moment is it when the throng 

Of warblers in full concert strong 

Strive, and not vainly strive to rout 

The lagging shower, and force coy Phoebus out, — 

Met by the rainbow's form divine, 

Issuing from her cloudy shrine : 

So may the thrillings of the lyre j 

Prevail to further our desire, j 

While to these shades a sister Nymph I call. j; 



Come, if the notes thine ear may pierce, 

Come, Youngest of the Lovely Three ! 

Submissive to the might of Verse 

And the dear voice of Harmony, 

By none more deeply felt than thee. 

— I sang ; and lo ! from pastimes virginal 

She hastens to the tents 

Of Nature and the lonely elements. 

Air sparkles round her with a dazzling sheen ; 

But mark her glowing cheek, her vesture green ! 

And, as if wishful to disarm 

Or to repay the potent Charm, 

She bears the stringed lute of old Romance, 

That cheer'd the trellis'd arbour's privacy, 

And soothed war-wearied knights in rafter'd hall. 

How vivid, yet how delicate her glee ! 

So tripp'd the Muse, inventress of the dance : 

So, truant in waste woods, the blithe Euphrosyne. 

But the ringlets of that head, 
Why are they ungarlanded ? 
Why bedeck her temples less 
Than the simplest shepherdess ? 



14 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

Is it not a brow inviting 

Choicest flowers that ever breathed, 

Which the myrtle would delight in, 

With Idalian rose enwreathed ? 

But her humility is well content 

With one wild floweret (call it not forlorn !) — 

Flower-of-the-winds, beneath her bosom worn, 

But more for love than ornament. 

Open, ye thickets ! let her fly, 

Swift as a Thracian Nymph o'er field and height : 

For she, to all but those who love her shy, 

Would gladly vanish from a stranger's sight ; 

Though where she is beloved and loves 

Light as the wheeling butterfly she moves : 

Her happy spirit as a bird is free 

That rifles blossoms on a tree. 

Turning them inside out with arch audacity. 

Alas ! how little can a moment show 

Of an eye where feeling plays 

In ten thousand dewy rays ; 

A face o'er which a thousand shadows go ! 

She stops, — is fasten'd to that rivulet's side ; 

And there (while with sedater mien 

O'er timid waters that have scarcely left 

Their birth-place in the rocky cleft 

She bends) at leisure may be seen 

Features, to old ideal grace allied. 

Amid their smiles and dimples dignified : 

Fit countenance for the soul of primal truth. 

The bland composure of eternal youth I 

What more changeful than the sea ? 

But over his great tides 

Fidelity presides : 

And this light-hearted Maiden constant is as he. 

High is her aim as heaven above. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1$ 

And wide as ether her good-will ; 

And, like the lowly reed, her love 

Can drink its nurture from the scantiest rill ; 

Insight as keen as frosty star 

Is to her charity no bar, 

Nor interrupts her frolic graces 

When she is, far from these wild places, 

Encircled by familiar faces. 

O the charm that manners draw. 

Nature ! from thy genuine law^ : 

If from what her hand would do, | 

Her voice would utter, aught ensue I 

Untoward or unfit, "I 

. ''' 

She in benign affections pure, •: 

In self-forgetfulness secure, 

Sheds round the transient harm or vague mischance ;■ 

A light unknown to tutor'd elegance : ' 

Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken ; 

But her blushes are joy-flushes, i 

And the fault, if fault it be, 'j 

Only ministers to quicken 1 

Laughter-loving gaiety. 

And kindle sportive wit, — | 

Leaving this Daughter of the Mountains free | 

As if she knew that Oberon, King of Faery, 

Had cross'd her purpose with some vague vagary, | 

And heard his viewless bands I 

Over their mirthful triumph clapping hands. 

— Last of the Three, though eldest born! 

Reveal thyself, like pensive Morn 

Touch'd by the skylark's earliest note. 

Ere humbler gladness be afloat. | 

But whether in the semblance dress'd | 

Of Dawn, or Eve (fair Vision of the West), k 

Come with each anxious hope subdued V 



l6 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

By woman's gentle fortitude, ; 
Each grief through meekness settUng into rest ! 

Or I would hail thee when some high-wrought page ■ 

Of a closed volume lingering in thy hand ; 

Has raised thy spirit to a peaceful stand ] 

Among the glories of a happier age. ( 

Her brow hath open'd on me : see it there | 

Brightening the umbrage of her hair ! ^ 

So gleams the crescent moon, that loves ] 

To be descried through shady groves. i 

Tenderest bloom is on her cheek : 'i 

Wish not for a richer streak, ; 

Nor dread the depth of meditative eye ! j 

But let thy love, upon that azure field ' 

Of thoughtfulness and beauty, yield ; 

Its homage, offer'd up in purity ! 'j 

What wouldst thou more ? In sunny glade, j 

Or under leaves of thickest shade, 'I 

Was such a stillness e'er diffused ■ 

Since earth grew calm while angels mused ? j 

Softly she treads, as if her foot were loath ■ 

To crush the mountain dew-drops, soon to melt j 

On the flower's breast, — as if she felt \ 

That flowers themselves, whate'er their hue, \ 

With all their fragrance, all their glistening, \ 

Call to the heart for inward listening ; ; 
And though for bridal wreaths and tokens true 

Welcomed wisely, though a growth ; 

Which the careless shepherd sleeps on, | 

As fitly spring from turf the mourner weeps on, ! 
And without wrong are cropp'd the marble tomb to strew. j 

The Charm is over! the mute Phantoms gone. 

Nor will return ! But droop not, favour'd Youth ! I 

The apparition that before thee shone I 

Obey'd a summons covetous of truth. ' 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 1/ 

From these wild rocks thy footsteps I will guide 

To bowers in which thy fortune may be tried, 

And one of the Bright Three become thy happy Bride. 

NATURAL PIETY. 

My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky : 
So was it when my life began, 
So is it now I am a man, 
So be it when I shall grow old. 

Or let me die ! 
The Child is father of the Man : 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety. 

SONNETS. 

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ! 

The holy time is quiet as a Nun 

Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 

Is sinking down in its tranquillity; 

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea : 

Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 

And doth with his eternal motion make 

A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 

Dear Child ! dear Girl ! that walkest with me here, 

If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought, 

Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, 

And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 

God bein^ with thee when we know it not. 



This world is too much with us : late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
Little we see of Nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, — a sordid boon I 

II. -2 



1 8 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. 

This sea that bares her bosom to the moon, — 
The winds, that will be howHng at all hours. 
And are upgather'd now like sleeping flowers, — 
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan, suckled in a creed outworn : 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 



O'er the wide earth, on mountain and on plain, 

Dwells in the affections and the soul of man 

A Godhead, like the universal Pan, 

But more exalted, with a brighter train : 

And shall his bounty be dispensed in vain, 

Shower'd equally on city and on field. 

And neither hope nor steadfast promise yield 

In these usurping times of fear and pain ? 

Such doom awaits us. Nay ! forbid it, Heaven ! 

We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws 

To which the triumph of all good is given, — 

High sacrifice and labour without pause 

Even to the death : else wherefore should the eye 

Of man converse with immortality ? 



There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear 
Than his who breathes, by roof and flower and wall 
Pent in, a tyrant's solitary Thrall. 
'Tis his who walks about in the open air 
One of a Nation who henceforth must wear 
Their fetters in their souls : for who could be. 
Who, even the best, in such condition free 
From self-reproach, reproach that he must share 
With human nature ? Never be it ours 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. I9 

To see the sun how brightly it will shine, 
And know that noble feelings, manly powers, 
Instead of gathering strength, must droop and pine ; 
And earth, with all her pleasant fruits and flowers, 
Fade and participate in man's decline ! 



Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne 
Which mists and vapours from mine eyes did shroud, 
Nor view of who might sit thereon allow'd ; 
But all the steps and ground about were strown 
With sights the ruefullest that flesh and bone 
Ever put on, — a miserable crowd. 
Sick, hale, old, young, who cried before that cloud — 
** Thou art our king, O Death ! to thee we groan." 
Those steps I clomb, the mists before me gave 
Smooth way ; and I beheld the face of One 
Sleeping alone within a mossy cave, 
With her face up to heaven, that seem'd to have 
Pleasing remembrance of a thought foregone : 
A lovely Beauty in a summer grave ! 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

1772— 1834. 



GENEVIEVE. 



All thoughts, all passions, all delights, 
Whatever stirs this mortal frame, 
All are but ministers of Love, 
And feed his sacred flame. 

Oft in my waking dreams do I 
Live o'er again that happy hour 
When midway on the mount I lay 
Beside the ruin'd tower. 

The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene, 
Had blended with the lights of eve, 



20 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

And she was there, my hope, my joy, 
My own dear Genevieve. 

She lean'd against the armed man. 
The statue of the armed knight ; 
She stood and Hsten'd to my lay 
Amid the Hngering Hght. 

Few sorrows hath she of her own, 
My hope, my joy, my Genevieve : 
She loves me best whene'er I sing 
The songs that make her grieve. 

I play'd a soft and doleful air, 
I sang an old and moving story. 
An old rude song that suited well 
The ruin wild and hoary. 

She Hsten'd, with a flitting blush, 
"With downcast eyes, and modest grace, 
For well she knew I could not choose 
But gaze upon her face. 

I told her of the knight that bore 
Upon his shield a burning brand ; 
And how for ten long years he woo'd 
The Lady of the Land ; 

I told her how he pined ; and ah ! 
The deep, the low, the pleading tone 
With which I sang another's love 
Interpreted my own. 

She Hsten'd, with a flitting blush, 
With downcast eyes, and modest grace ; 
And she forgave me that I gazed 
Too fondly on her face. 

But when I told the cruel scorn 

That crazed this bold and lovely knight, 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 21 

And how he roam'd the mountain woods, 
Nor rested, day or night ; 

And how he cross'd the woodman's paths, 
Through briars and swampy mosses beat ; 
How boughs rebounding scourged his hmbs, 
And low stubs gored his feet ; 

That sometimes from the savage den, 
And sometimes from the darksome shade. 
And sometimes starting up at once 
In green and sunny glade, 

There came, and look'd him in the face, 
An Angel beautiful and bright. 
And that he knew it was a Fiend, 
This miserable Knight ; 

And how, unknowing what he did, 
He leap'd amid a murderous band 
And saved from outrage worse than death 
The Lady of the Land ; 

And how she wept, and clasp'd his knees ; 
And how she tended him in vain. 
And ever strove to expiate 

The scorn that crazed his brain ; 

And how she nursed him in a cave ; 
And that his madness went away 
When on the yellow forest-leaves 
A dying man he lay ; 

His dying words ; — But when I reach'd 
That tenderest strain of all the ditty 
My faltering voice and pausing harp 
Disturb'd her soul with pity. 

All impulses of soul and sense 

Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve : 



22 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

The music and the doleful tale, 
The rich and balmy eve ; 

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope, 
An undistinguishable throng, 
And gentle wishes long subdued, 
Subdued and cherish'd long. 

She wept, with pity and delight ; 
She blush'd, with love and virgin shame ; 
And, like the murmur of a dream, 
I heard her breathe my name. 

Her bosom heaved, — she stepp'd aside, 
As conscious of my look she stepp'd ; 
Then suddenly, with timorous eye, 
She fled to me, and wept. 

She half-enclosed me in her arms ; 
She press'd me with a meek embrace ; 
And, bending back her head, look'd up 
And gazed upon my face. 

'Twas partly love, and partly fear, 
And partly 'twas a bashful art 
That I might rather feel than see 
The swelling of her heart. 

I calm'd her fears, and she was calm, 
And told her love with virgin pride : 
And so I won my Genevieve, 

My bright and beauteous Bride. 

NAMES. 

I ask'd my Fair, one happy day. 
What I should call her in my lay, — 
By what sweet name from Rome or Greece : 
Lalag^, Neasra, Chloris, 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 23 

Sappho, Lesbia, or Doris, 
Arethusa, or Lucrece. 

Ah ! replied my gentle Fair : 
Beloved ! what are names but air ? 
Choose thou whatever suits the line ! 

Call me Sappho, call me Chloris, 

Call me Lalage, or Doris, — 

Only, only call me Thine ! 

TO A YOUNG ASS. 

Its mother being tethered near it. 

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race ! 

I love the languid patience of thy face ; 

And oft with gentle hand I give thee bread, 

And clap thy ragged coat, and pat thy head. 

But what thy dulled spirits hath dismay'd. 

That never thou dost sport along the glade ; 

And, most unlike the nature of things young, [ 

That earthward still thy moveless head is hung ? !- 

Do thy prophetic fears anticipate, i 

Meek Child of Misery ! thy future fate : ' 

The starving meal, and all the thousand aches 

That patient Merit of the Unworthy takes ? j 

Or is thy sad heart thrill'd with filial pain 1 

To see thy wretched mother's shorten'd chain ? | 

And truly, very piteous is her lot, 

Chain'd to a log within a narrow spot 

Where the close-eaten grass is scarcely seen, 

While sweet around her waves the tempting green. | 

Poor Ass ! thy master should have learn'd to show \ 

Pity, best taught by fellowship of woe : j 

For much I fear me that he lives like thee, '! 

Half famish'd in a land of luxury. jj 

How askingly its footsteps hither bend ! | 

It seems to say — And have I then one friend ? \ 



24 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

Innocent Foal ! thou poor despised Forlorn ! 

I hail thee Brother, spite of the fool's scorn ; 

And fain would take thee with me, in the dell 

Of Peace and mild Equality to dwell, 

Where Toil shall call the charmer Health his bride, 

And Laughter tickle Plenty's ribless side. 

How thou wouldst toss thy heels in gamesome play, 

And frisk about, as lamb or kitten gay ! 

Yea ! and more musically sweet to me 

Thy dissonant harsh bray of joy would be 

Than warbled melodies that soothe to rest 

The aching of pale Fashion's vacant breast. 

LOVE AND HOPE AND PATIENCE IN EDUCATION. 

O'er wayward childhood wouldst thou hold firm rule 

And sun thee in the light of happy faces. 

Love, Hope, and Patience, — these must be thy Graces ; 

And in thine own heart let them first keep school ! 

For, as old Atlas on his broad neck places 

Heaven's starry globe and there sustains it, so 

Do these upbear the little world below 

Of Education, — Patience, Love, and Hope. 

Methinks I see them group'd in seemly show. 

The straiten'd arms upraised, the palms aslope, 

And robes that, touching as adown they flow 

Distinctly, blend like snow emboss'd in snow. 

O part them never ! If Hope prostrate lie. 

Love too will sink and die. 
But love is subtle, and doth proof derive 
From her own life that Hope is yet alive ; 
And bending o'er, with soul-transfusing eyes, 
And the soft murmurs of the mother dove, 
Woos back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies : 
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love. 
Yet haply there will come a weary day 

When, overtask'd at length, 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 2$ 

Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way. 
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength, 
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loath, 
And, both supporting, does the work of both. 



YOUTH AND AGE, 

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, 

Where Hope clung feeding like a bee : 

Both were mine ; Life went a-maying 

With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, 

When I was young. 

When I was young ? Ah, woeful when ! 

Ah, for the change 'twixt now and then ! 

This breathing house not built with hands, 

This body that does me grievous wrong. 

O'er airy cliffs and glittering sands 

How lightly then it flash'd along ! 

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, 

On winding lakes and rivers wide, 

That ask no aid of sail or oar. 

That fear no spite of wind or tide, 

Nought cared this body for wind or weather 

When Youth and I lived in it together. , 

\ 
Flowers are lovely, Love is flower-like ; j 

Friendship is a sheltering tree : I 

O the joys that came down shower-like j 

Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, ; 

Ere I was old ! 

Ere I was old ? Ah, woeful ere ! i 

Which tells me Youth's no longer here. i 

O youth ! for years so many and sweet 

'Tis known that thou and I were one, ! 

I'll think it but a fond conceit 

(It can not be) that thou art gone. 

Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toU'd, 



26 ROBERT SOUTHEY. 

And thou wert aye a masquer bold : 
What strange disguise hast now put on 
To make beheve that thou art gone ? 
I see these locks in silvery slips, 
This drooping gait, this alter'd size ; 
But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips, 
And tears take sunshine from thine eyes I 
Life is but thought : so think I will 
That Youth and I are house-mates still. 

Dew-drops are the gems of Morning, 
But the tears of mournful Eve ; 
Where no hope is, life's a warning 
That only serves to make us grieve 

When we are old : 
That only serves to make us grieve 
With oft and tedious taking leave : 
Like some poor nigh-related guest, 
That may not rudely be dismiss'd. 
Yet hath outstay'd his welcome-while 
And tells the jest without the smile. 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 

1774— 1843. 



THE HOLLY TREE. 

O Reader ! hast thou ever stood to see 

The Holly Tree ? 
The eye that contemplates it well perceives 

Its glossy leaves 
Order'd by an intelligence so wise 
As might confound the Atheist's sophistries. 

Below, a circling fence, its leaves are seen 
Wrinkled and keen : 



ROBERT SOUTHEY. 2/ 

No grazing cattle through their prickly round \' 

Can reach to wound ; 
But as they grow where nothing is to fear j 

Smooth and unarm'd the pointless leaves appear. , 

I love to view these things with curious eyes, 

And moralize ; 
And in this wisdom of the Holly Tree 

Can emblems see 
Wherewith, perchance, to make a pleasant rhyme, 
One which may profit in the after-time. 

Thus, though abroad perchance I might appear ; 

Harsh and austere. 

To those who on my leisure would intrude " 

Reserved and rude, — 

Gentle at home amid my friends I'd be, j 

Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. i; 

And should my youth, as youth is apt I know, 

Some harshness show, 1 

All vain asperities I day by day ! 

Would wear away, 
Till the smooth temper of my age should be 
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree. ; 



So bright and green, 
The Holly leaves their fadeless hues display 

Less bright than they, 
But when the bare and wintry woods we see 
What then so cheerful as the Holly Tree, — ■ 

So, serious should my youth appear among 
The thoughtless throng. 

So would I seem, amid the young and gay 
More grave than they, 

That in my age as cheerful I might be 

As the green winter of the Holly Tree. 



28 ROBERT TANNAHILL. 

THE SCHOLAR. 

My days among the Dead are pass'd 

Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 

The mighty Minds of Old : 
My never-failing friends are they. 
With whom I converse day by day. 

With them I take delight in v\^eal, 

And seek relief in woe ; 
And while I understand and feel 

How much to them I owe 
My cheeks have often been bedew'd 
With tears of thoughtful gratitude. 

My thoughts are with the Dead : with them 

I live in long-past years ; 
Their virtues love, their faults condemn, 

Partake their hopes and fears ; 
And from their lessons seek and find 
Instruction with an humble mind. 

My hopes are with the Dead ; anon 

My place with them will be ; 
And I with them shall travel on 

Through all futurity : 
Yet leaving here a name, I trust, 
That will not perish in the dust. 

ROBERT TANNAHILL. 

1774 — 1810. 



LOVE'S FEAR. 

O sair I rue the witless wish 

That gart me gang wi' you at e'en ! 

And sair I rue the birken bush 

That screen'd us with its leaves sae green ! 



ROBERT TANNAHILL. 29 

\, And though you vow'd you would be mine, 

The tear of grief aye dims my ee, 
For O I'm fear'd that I may tine 
The love that ye hae promised me 

While others seek their evening sports, 

I wander dowie, a' my lane : 
For when I join their glad resorts 

Their daffin' gie's me mickle pain. 
Alas ! it was na sae short syne, 

When a' my nights were spent wi' glee : 
But O I'm fear'd that I may tine 

The love that ye hae promised me. 

Dear Lassie ! keep thy heart aboon, 

For I hae wair'd my winter's fee : 
I've coft a bonnie silken gown 

To be a bridal gift for thee. 
And sooner shall the hills fa' down, 

And mountain high shall stand the sea. 
Ere I'd accept a gowden crown 

To change that love I bear for thee. 

MINE A IN DEAR SOMEBODY. 

When gloaming treads the heels of day. 
And birds sit cowering on the spray, 
Alang the flowery hedge I stray 

To meet mine ain dear Somebody. 

The scented briar, the fragrant bean, 
The clover bloom, the dewy green, 
A' charm me as I rove at e'en 

To meet mine ain dear Somebody. 

Let warriors prize the hero's name ! 
Let mad Ambition tower for fame 1 
I'm happier in my lowly hame, 

Obscurely bless'd wi' Somebody. 



30 SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

1771— 1832. 



THE CLAN-GATHERING. 

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu ! 

Pibroch of Donuil ! 
Wake thy wild voice anew ! 

Summon Clan-Conuil ! 
Come away ! come away ! 

Hark to the summons ! 
Come in your war array, 

Gentles and Commons ! 

Come from deep glen, and 

From mountain so rocky ! 
The war-pipe and pennon 

Are at Inverlochy. 
Come, every hill-plaid and 

True heart that wears one ! 
Come, every steel blade and 

Strong hand that bears one ! 

Leave untended the herd, 

The flock without shelter ! 
Leave the corpse uninterr'd. 

The bride at the altar ! 
Leave the deer ! leave the steer ! 

Leave nets and barges ! 
Come with your fighting gear, 

Broadswords and targes ! 

Come, as the winds come when 

Forests are rended ! 
Come, as the waves come when 

Navies are stranded ! 
Faster come ! faster come ! 



SIR WALTER SCOTT. 3 1 

Faster and faster 

Chief, vassal, page, and groom, 
Tenant, and master ! 

Fast they come, fast they come : 

See how they gather ! 
Wide waves the eagle plume 

Blended with heather. 
Cast your plaids ! draw your blades I 

Forward each man set ! 
Pibroch of Donuil Dhu I 

Knell for the onset ! 



JOCK G' HAZELDEAN. \ 

*' Why weep ye by the tide ? Lady ! t 

Why weep ye by the tide ? 

I'll wed ye to my youngest son, I 

And ye shall be his bride : [. 

And ye shall be his bride, Lady ! |j 

Sae comely to be seen." Ji 

But aye she loot the tears downfa' v 

For Jock o' Hazeldean. \ 

" Now let this wilfu' grief be done, ^ 

And dry that cheek so pale ! | 

Young Frank is chief of Errington, :| 

And lord of Langley-dale ; ;: 

His step is first in peaceful ha', [■ 

His sword in battle keen." i' 

But aye she loot the tears downfa' ! 

For Jock o' Hazeldean. ,! 

** A chain of gold ye shall not lack, \ 

Nor braid to bind your hair, j 
Nor mettled hound, nor managed hawk. 

Nor palfrey fresh and fair ; \ 



32 . SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

And you the foremost of them a' 

Shall ride, our forest queen." 
But aye she loot the tears downfa* 

For Jock o' Hazeldean. 

The kirk was deck'd at morning-tide, 

The tapers glimmer'd fair ; 
The priest and bridegroom wait the bride, 

But ne'er a bride was there. 
They sought her baith by bower and ha' ; 

The lady was not seen : 
She's o'er the Border, and awa' 

Wi' Jock o' Hazeldean. 



LIGHT LOVE. 

A weary lot is thine, fair Maid ! 

A weary lot is thine : 
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid, 

And press the rue for wine. 
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien, 

A feather of the blue, 
A doublet of the Lincoln green, — 

No more of me you knew. 
My Love ! 
No more of me you knew. 

This morn is merry June, I trow 

The rose is budding fain ; 
But she shall bloom in winter snow 

Ere we two meet again. 
He turned his charger as he spake, 

Upon the river shore ; 
He gave his bridle rein a shake, — 

Said Adieu forevermore, 

My Love ! 
And Adieu forevermore ! 



SIR WALTER SCOTT, 33 

DEATH-CHANT. 

Wasted, weary, wherefore stay, 
Wrestling thus with earth and clay ? 
From the body pass away ! 

Hark ! the mass is singing. 

From thee doff thy mortal weed ! 
Mary Mother be thy speed ! 
Saints to help thee at thy need ! 
Hark ! the knell is ringing. 

Fear not snow-drift driving fast, 
Sleet, or hail, or levin blast ! 
Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast, 
And the sleep be on thee cast 

That shall ne'er know waking. 

Haste thee, haste thee to be gone ! 
Earth flits fast, and time draws on : 
Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan ! 
Day is near the breaking. 

PROUD MA IS IE. 

Proud Maisie is in the wood. 

Walking so early ; 
Sweet Robin sits on the bush, 

Singing so rarely. 

*' Tell me, thou bonny bird ! 

When shall I marry me ? " 
" When six braw gentlemen 

Kirkward shall carry thee." 

" Who makes the bridal bed ? 

Birdie ! say truly." 
*' The grey-headed sexton 

That delves the grave duly. 
n.-3 



34 JAMES MONTGOMERY. 

" The glowworm o'er grave and stone 
Shall light thee steady ; 
The owl from the steeple sing 
Welcome, proud Lady ! " 

JAMES MONTGOMERY. 

1771—1854. 



TI/£ BLACKBIRD. • 

Morning : 1 

Golden Bill ! Golden Bill ! \ 

Lo, the peep of day : j 

All the air is cool and still : 1 

From the elm-tree on the hill \ 

Chant away ! I 
While the moon drops down the West, 

Like thy mate upon her nest, \ 

And the stars before the sun \ 

Melt like snowflakes, one by one, \ 

Let thy loud and welcome lay ' 

Pour along ; 

Few notes, but strong ! [ 

Evening : j 

Jet-bright Wing ! Jet-bright Wing ! ; 

Flit across the sunset glade : 

Lying there in wait to sing, \ 

Listen with thy head awry, \ 
Keeping time with twinkling eye, 

While from all the woodland shade i 
Birds of every plume and note 

Strain the throat. 
Till both hill and valley ring. 
And the warbled minstrelsy. 

Ebbing, flowing, like the sea, \^ 

Claims brief interludes from thee ! \ 

\ 



JAMES HOGG. 35 

Then with simple swell and fall, 
Breaking beautiful through all, 
Let thy Pan-like pipe repeat 
Few notes, but sweet ! 

WINTER LIGHTNING. 

The flash at midnight, — 'twas a light 
That gave the blind a moment's sight, 

Then sunk in tenfold gloom ; 
Loud, deep, and long, the thunder broke. 
The deaf ear instantly awoke, 

Then closed as in the tomb : 
An angel might have pass'd my bed. 
Sounded the trump of God, and fled. 

So Life appears : a sudden birth, 

A glance revealing heaven and earth ; 

It is, and it is not ! 
So Fame the poet's hope deceives, 
Who sings for after-time, and leaves 

A name — to be forgot. 
Life is a lightning-flash of breath ; 
Fame but a thunder-clap at death. 

JAMES HOGG. 
1772— 1835. 



TO THE LARK. 

Bird of the wilderness ! 

Blithesome and cumberless, — 
Sweet be thy matin, o'er moorland and lea ! 

Emblem of happiness ! 

Bless'd is thy dwelling-place : 
O to abide in the desert with thee ! 

Wild is thy lay, and loud. 
Far in the downy cloud : 



36 JAMES HOGG. 

Love gives it energy, love gave it birth. 

Where on thy dewy wing, 

Where art thou journeying ? 
Thy lay is in heaven, thy love is on earth. 



O'er fell, and fountain sheen, '\ 

O'er moor and mountain green, | 

O'er the red streamer that heralds the Day, 'j 

Over the cloudlet dim, i 

Over the rainbow's rim, 1 

Musical Cherub ! soar singing away ! ! 

Then, when the gloaming comes, 

Low in the heather blooms 

Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be : . 

Emblem of happiness ! i 

Bless'd is thy dwelling-place : ' 
O to abide in the desert with thee ! 



MAGGIE AlVAY. 

O, what will a' the lads do 

When Maggie gangs away ? 
O what will a' the lads do 

When Maggie gangs away ? 
There's no a heart in a' the glen 

That doesna dread the day : 
O, what will a' the lads do 

When Maggie gangs away ? 

Young Jock has ta'en the hill for't,- 

A waefu' wight is he ; 
Poor Harry's ta'en the bed for't, 

And laid him down to dee ; 
And Sandy's gane unto the kirk. 

And learnin' fast to pray : 
And O, what will the lads do 
;ie gangs away ? 



CHARLES LAMB. 37 \ 

The young laird o' the Lang-Shaw ; 

Has drunk her health in wine ; i 

The priest has said (in confidence) j ; 

The lassie was divine : ; \ 
And that is mair in maiden's praise 

Than any priest should say : 

But O ! what will the lads do i 

When Maggie gangs away ? ; ; 

■ij 

The wailing in our green glen jii 

That day will quaver high ; | 

'Twill draw the red -breast frae the wood, I 

The laverock frae the sky ; | 

The fairies frae their beds o' dew | 

Will rise and join the lay : j 

And hey ! what a day will be ' 

When Maggie gangs away ! 

CHARLES LAMB. 
1775— 1834. 



HESTER. 



When maidens such as Hester die, 
Their place ye may not well supply. 
Though ye among a thousand try, 
With vain endeavour. 

A month or more hath she been dead, 
Yet can I not by force be led 
To think upon the wormy bed 
And her together. 

A springy motion in her gait, 
A rising step, did indicate 
Of pride and joy no common rate 
That flush'd her spirit : 



38 CHARLES LAMB. 

I know not by what name beside 
I shall it call, — if 'twas not pride, 
It was a joy to that allied 
She did inherit. 

Her parents held the Quaker rule, 
Which doth the human feeling cool ; 
But she was train'd in Nature's school,— 
Nature had bless'd her. 

A waking eye, a prying mind, 
A heart that stirs, is hard to bind : 
A hawk's keen sight ye can not blind, — 
Ye could not Hester. 

My sprightly Neighbor ! gone before 
To that unknown and silent shore : 
Shall we not tneet, as heretofore 



Some summer morning ? i 

When from thy cheerful eyes a ray 
Hath struck a bliss upon the day, 
A bliss that would not go away, 

A sweet forewarning. i 

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES. < 

I have had playmates, I have had companions, j 

In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days : 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ! 

I have been laughing, I have been carousing, 
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies : 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces! 

I loved a Love once, fairest among women ; 
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her ; 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ! 



CHARLES LAMB. 39 

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man : 
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly; 
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces. 

Ghost-like I paced round the haunts of my childhood : 
Earth seem'd a desert I was bound to traverse. 
Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 

Friend of my bosom ! thou more than a brother ! 
Why wert thou not born in my father's dwelling ? 
So might we talk of the old familiar faces : 

How some they have died, and some they have left me, 
And some are taken from me, — all are departed. 
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces ! 



THE GYPSY'S MALISON. 

** Suck, baby ! suck ! mother's love grows by giving : 
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting ! 
Black manhood comes, when riotous guilty living 
Hands thee the cup that shall be death in tasting. 

" Kiss, baby ! kiss ! mother's lips shine by kisses : 

Choke the warm breath that else would fall in blessings ! 
Black manhood comes, when turbulent guilty blisses 
Tend thee the kiss that poisons 'mid caressings. 

" Hang, baby ! hang ! mother's love loves such forces : 
Strain the fond neck that bends still to thy clinging ! 
Black manhood comes, when violent lawless courses 
Leave thee a spectacle in rude air swinging." 

So sang a wither'd beldam energetical ; 

And bann'd the ungiving door with lips prophetical. 



40 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

1775— 1864. 



TO HESPERUS. 

Hesperus ! hail ! thy winking light 

Best befriends the lover, 
Whom the sadder Moon for spite 

Gladly would discover. 

Thou art fairer far than she, 

Fairer far, and chaster : 
She may guess who smiled on me, 

I know who embraced her. 

Pan of Arcady, — 'twas Pan, 

In the tamarisk-bushes : 
Bid her tell thee, if she can, 

Where were then her blushes ! 

And, were I inclined to tattle, 

I could name a second 
Whom, asleep with sleeping cattle, 

To her cave she beckon' d. 

Hesperus ! hail ! thy friendly ray 

Watches o'er the lover, 
Lest the nodding beams betray. 

Lest the Moon discover. 

Phryne heard my kisses given 

Acte's rival bosom : 
'Twas the buds (I swore by heaven) 

Bursting into blossom. 

What she heard, and half espied 
By the gleam, she doubted ; 

And with arms uplifted cried — 
" How they must have sprouted ! " 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 4l 

Hesperus ! hail again ! thy light 

Best befriends the lover, 
Whom the sadder Moon for spite 

Gladly would discover. 



RUBIES. 

Often have I heard it said 
That her lips are ruby-red : 
Little heed I what they say, — 
I have seen as red as they. 
Ere she smiled on other men, 
Real rubies were they then. 

When she kiss'd me once in play, 
Rubies were less bright than they ; 
And less bright were those which shone 
In the palace of the Sun. 
Will they be as bright agen ? 
Not if kiss'd by other men. 



THE NEREID. :\ 

Beloved the last ! beloved the most ! J 

With willing arms and brow benign ;| 

Receive a bosom tempest-toss'd, (| 

And bid it ever beat to thine ! :lil 



The Nereid Maids, in days of yore, 
Saw the lost pilot loose the helm. 

Saw the wreck blacken all the shore, 
And every wave some head o'erwhclm. 

Afar, the youngest of the train 
Beheld (but fear'd and aided not) 

A minstrel from the billowy main 
Borne breathless near her coral grot. 



42 WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 

Then terror fled, and pity rose : 

'' Ah me ! " she cried, " I come too late ! 

Rather than not have soothed his woes 
I would, but may not, share his fate." 

She raised his hand : '' What hand like this 
Could reach the heart, athwart the lyre ! 

What lips like these return my kiss, 
Or breathe, incessant, soft desire ! " 

From eve to morn, from morn to eve, 
She gazed his features o'er and o'er : 

And those who love and who believe 
May hear her sigh along the shore. 



THE MAID 'S LAMENT. 

1 

I loved him not ; and yet, now he is gone, I 

I feel I am alone. ] 

I check'd him while he spoke ; yet could he speak, 'j 

Alas ! I would not check. ' 

For reasons not to love him once I sought, j 

And wearied all my thought \ 

To vex myself and him ; I now would give ] 

My love, could he but live j 

Who lately lived for me and, when he found i 

'Twas vain, in holy ground ' 
He hid his face amid the shades of death. 

I waste for him my breath j 

Who wasted his for me ; but mine returns \ 

And this lorn bosom burns ) 

With stifling heat, heaving it up in sleep, : 

And waking me to weep 

Tears that had melted his soft heart : for years ! 

Wept he as bitter tears. J 

■ Merciful God ! " — such was his latest prayer : \ 

'' These may she never share ! " j 

■1 
\ 



WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 43 

Quieter is his breath, his breast more cold 

Than daisies in the mould, 
Where children spell athwart the churchyard -gate 

His name and life's brief date. 
Pray for him, gentle souls ! whoe'er you be ; 

And O, pray too for me ! 

MARGARET. 

Mother ! I cannot mind my wheel ; 
My fingers ache, my lips are dry. 

O, if you felt that pain I feel 

But O, who ever felt as I ? 
No longer could I doubt him true : 
All other men may use deceit, — 
He always said my eyes were blue, 
And often swore my lips were sweet. 

TO YOUTH. 

Where art thou gone ? light-ankled Youth ! 

With wing at either shoulder. 
And smile that never left thy mouth 

Until the hours grew colder. 

Then somewhat seem'd to whisper near 

That thou and I must part : 
I doubted it, — I felt no fear, 

No weight upon the heart. 

If aught befell it. Love was by 

And roll'd it off again : 
So, if there ever was a sigh, 

'Twas not a sigh of pain. 

I may not call thee back ; but thou 

Returnest when the hand 
Of gentle Sleep waves o'er my brow 

His poppy-crested wand. 



44 THOMAS CAMPBELL 

1 
Then smiling eyes bend over mine ; j 

Then hps, once press'd, invite : j 

But Sleep hath given a silent sign, '' 

And both, alas ! take flight. I 

\ 

ERINNA TO LOVE. : 

Who breathes to thee the holiest prayer, i 

O Love ! is ever least thy care. \ 

Alas ! I may not ask thee why 'tis so : j 

Because a fiery scroll I see | 

Hung at the throne of Destiny, — | 

" Reason with Love and register with Woe ! " I 

Few question thee, for thou art strong, j 

And, laughing loud at Right and Wrong, J 
Seizest and dashest down the rich, the poor ; 

Thy sceptre's iron studs alike I 

The meaner and the prouder strike, | 

And wise and simple fear thee and adore. I 

i 

THOMAS CAMPBELL. j 

1777—1844. ! 



THE BATTLE OF THE BALTIC. 

Of Nelson and the North 
Sing the glorious day's renown ! 
When to battle fierce came forth 
All the might of Denmark's Crown, 
And her arms along the deep proudly shone : 
By each gun the lighted brand 
In a bold determined hand, 
And the Prince of all the land 
Led them on. 

Like leviathans afloat 

Lay their bulwarks on the brine 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 45 

While the sign of battle flew 
On the lofty British line : 
It was ten of April morn by the chime. 
As they drifted on their path 
There was silence deep as death, 
And the boldest held his breath 
For a time. 

But the might of England flush'd 
To anticipate the scene ; 
And her van the fleeter rush'd 
O'er the deadly space between : 
** Hearts of oak ! " our captains cried : when each gun 
From its adamantine lips 
Spread a death-shade round the ships, 
Like the hurricane eclipse 

Of the sun. 

Again ! again ! again ! 

And the havoc did not slack 

Till a feeble cheer the Dane 

To our cheering sent us back ; 

Their shots along the deep slowly boom ; — 

Then ceased ; — and all is wail, 

As they strike the shatter'd sail. 

Or in conflagration pale 

Light the gloom. 

Out spoke the Victor then. 
As he haird them o'er the wave : 
*' Ye are brothers ! ye are men ! 
And we conquer but to save, — 
So peace instead of death let us bring ! 
But yield, proud foe ! thy fleet, 
"With the crews, at England's feet. 
And make submission meet 

To our king: ! " 



46 THOMAS CAMPBELL. 

Then Denmark bless'd our chief, 
That he gave her wounds repose : 
And the sounds of joy and grief 
From her people wildly rose, 

As Death withdrew his shades from the day ; ! 

While the sun look'd smiling bright ! 

O'er a wide and woeful sight 
Where the fires of funeral light 
Died away. 

Now joy, Old England ! raise ) 

For the tidings of thy might, * 

By the festal cities' blaze 

Whilst the wine-cup shines in light ! 

And yet, amidst that joy and uproar, 

Let us think of them that sleep, ] 

Full many a fathom deep, 

By thy wild and stormy steep, 

Elsinore ! i 

Brave hearts ! to Britain's pride, I 

Once so faithful and so true, 

On the deck of Fame that died i 

With the gallant good Riou : 

Soft sigh the winds of heaven o'er their grave ! 

While the billow mournful rolls. 

And the mermaid's song condoles, I 

Singing Glory to the souls 

Of the Brave ! 



THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND. 

Ye Mariners of England ! 

That guard our native seas, — 

Whose flag has braved a thousand years 

The battle and the breeze, — 

Your glorious standard launch again. 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 47 

To match another foe ; 
And sweep through the deep 
While the stormy winds do blow, — 
While the battle rages loud and long 
And the stormy winds do blow ! 

The spirits of your fathers 

Shall start from every wave : 

For the deck it was their field of fame, 

And ocean was their grave. 

Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell 

Your manly hearts shall glow, 

As ye sweep through the deep 

While the stormy winds do blow, — 

While the battle rages loud and long 

And the stormy winds do blow. 

Britannia needs no bulwarks, 

No towers along the steep : 

Her march is o'er the mountain wave. 

Her home is on the deep. 

With thunders from her native oak 

She quells the floods below, 

As they roar on the shore 

When the stormy winds do blow, — 

When the battle rages loud and long 

And the stormy winds do blow. 

The meteor flag of England 

Shall yet terrific burn 

Till dangers troubled night depart 

And the star of peace return. 

Then, then, ye Ocean-Warriors ! 

Our song and feast shall flow 

To the fame of your name. 

When the storm has ceased to blow, — 

When the fiery fight is heard no more, 

And the storm has ceased to blow. 



48 THOMAS CAMPBELL. 

HALLOWED GROUND. 

What's hallow'd ground ? Has earth a clod 
Its Maker mean'd not should be trod 
By Man, the image of his God, 

Erect and free, 
Unscourged by Superstition's rod 

To bow the knee ? 

That's hallow'd ground where, mourn'd and miss'd, 

The lips repose our love has kiss'd : 

But Where's their memory's mansion ? Is't 

Yon churchyard's bowers ? 
No ! in ourselves their souls exist, 

A part of ours. 

A kiss can consecrate the ground 
Where mated hearts are mutual bound : 
The spot where love's first links were wound, 

That ne'er are riven, 
Is hallow'd down to earth's profound 

And up to heaven. 

For time makes all but true love old : 
The burning thoughts that then were told 
Run molten still in memory's mould, 

And will not cool, 
Until the heart itself be cold 

In Lethe's pool. 

What hallows ground where heroes sleep ? 
'Tis not the sculptured piles you heap : 
In dews that heavens far distant weep 

Their turf may bloom, 
Or genii twine beneath the deep 

Their coral tomb. 

But strew his ashes to the wind 

Whose sword or voice has served mankind ! 



THOMAS CAMPBELL. 49 

And is he dead, whose glorious mind 

Lifts thine on high ? 
To live in hearts we leave behind 

Is not to die. 

Is't death to fall for Freedom's right ? 
He's dead alone that lacks her light ; 
And Murder sullies in Heaven's sight 

The sword he draws : 
What can alone ennoble fight ? 

A noble cause. 

Give that, and welcome War to brace 

Her drums and rend heaven's reeking space ! 

The colours planted face to face, 

The charging cheer. 
Though Death's Pale Horse lead on the chase, 

Shall still be dear. 

And place our trophies where men kneel 

To Heaven ! but Heaven rebukes my zeal : 

The cause of Truth and human weal, 

O God above ! 
Transfer it from the sword's appeal 

To Peace and Love ! 

Peace ! Love ! the cherubim that join 
Their spread wings o'er Devotion's shrine : 
Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine, 

Where they are not ; 
The heart alone can make divine 

Religion's spot. 

To incantations dost thou trust, 
And pompous rites in domes august ? 
See mouldering stones and metal's rust 
Belie the vaunt 
II. -4 



so THOMAS CAMPBELL. ; 

That men can bless one pile of dust 

With chime or chant ! 

I 

The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, Man ! j 

Thy temples creeds themselves grow wan : ] 

But there's a dome of nobler span, ' ■ 

A temple given 1 

Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban, — | 

Its space is heaven : ? 

Its roof star-pictured Nature's ceiling, 

Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling 

And God himself to Man revealing, , 

The harmonious spheres 

Make music, though unheard their pealing j 

By mortal ears. : 

Fair Stars ! are not your beings pure ? 
Can sin, can death your worlds obscure ? 
Else why so swell the thoughts at your 

Aspect above ? ; 

Ye must be Heavens that make us sure : 

Of heavenly love. ! 

And in your harmony sublime r 
I read the doom of distant time : 
That Man's regenerate soul from crime 

Shall yet be drawn, \ 

And Reason on his mortal clime, j 

Immortal dawn. / 

\ 
What's hallow'd ground ? 'Tis what gives birth 

To sacred thoughts in souls of worth : J 

Peace ! Independence ! Truth ! go forth j 

Earth's compass round ! ] 

And your high priesthood shall make earth J 

All hallow'd ground. > 



THOMAS MOORE. 5 1 

THOMAS MOORE. 

1779— 1852. 



THEN FARE THEE WELL ! 

Then fare thee well, my own dear Love ! 

This world has now for us 
No greater grief, no pain above 

The pain of parting thus, 
Dear Love ! 

The pain of parting thus. 

Had we but known, since first we met, 
Some few short hours of bliss, 

We might in numbering them forget 
The deep deep pain of this, 

Dear Love ! 
The deep deep pain of this. 

But no, alas ! we've never seen 

One glimpse of pleasure's ray- 
But still there came a cloud between 
And chased it all away, 

Dear Love ! 
And chased it all away. 

Yet even could those sad moments last, 

Far dearer to my heart 
Were hours of grief together pass'd 

Than years of mirth apart, 
Dear Love ! 

Than years of mirth apart. 

Farewell ! our hope was born in fears 
And nursed 'mid vain regrets : 

Like winter suns, it rose in tears, 
Like them in tears it sets. 

Dear Love ! 
Like them in tears it sets. 



52 THOMAS MOORE. 



PEACE BE AROUND THEE! 

Peace be around thee wherever thou rovest ! 

May life be for thee one summer's day, 
And all that thou wishest, and all that thou lovest, 

Come smiling around thy sunny way ! 
If sorrow e'er this calm should break, 

May even thy tears pass off so lightly, 
Like Spring showers they'll only make 

The smiles that follow shine more brightly J 

May Time, who sheds his blight o'er all, 

And daily dooms some joy to death, 
On thee let years so gently fall 

They shall not crush one flower beneath ! 
As half in shade and half in sun 

This world along its path advances, 
May that side the sun's upon 

Be all that e'er shall meet thy glances ! 



BRING THE BRIGHT GARLANDS! 

Bring the bright garlands hither, 

Ere yet a leaf is dying ! 
If so soon they must wither, 

Ours be their last sweet sighing ! 
Hark ! that low dismal chime : 
'Tis the dreary voice of Time. 
O, bring beauty, bring roses. 

Bring all that yet is ours ! 
Let life's day as it closes 

Shine to the last through flowers ! 

Haste ere the bowl's declining ! 

Drink of it now, or never ! 
Now, while Beauty is shining. 

Love ! or she's lost for ever. 



THOMAS MOORE. 53 

Hark ! again that dull chime : 
'Tis the dreary voice of Time. 
O, if life be a torrent 

Down to oblivion going, 
Like this cup be its current, 

Bright to the last drop flowing ! 



BATTLE SONG. 

O the sight entrancing 

When morning's beam is glancing 

O'er files array'd, 

With helm and blade, 
And plumes in the gay wind dancing ! 
When hearts are all high beating, 
And the trumpet's voice repeating 

That song whose breath 

May lead to death 
But never to retreating. 
Then should some cloud pass over 
The brow of sire or lover. 

Think 'tis the shade 

By Victory made, 
Whose wings right o'er us hover ! 
O the sight entrancing, 
When morning's beam is glancing 

O'er files array'd, 

With helm and blade. 
And plumes in the gay wind dancing. 

Yet 'tis not helm or feather : 

For ask yon despot whether 
His plumed bands 
Could bring such hands 

And hearts as ours together ! 

Leave pomps to those who need 'em I 



54 THOMAS MOORE. 

Give man but heart and freedom, 

And proud he braves 

The gaudiest slaves 
That crawl where monarchs lead 'em. 
The sword may pierce the beaver, 
Stone walls in time may sever ; 

'Tis mind alone, 

Worth steel and stone. 
That keeps men free for ever. 
O that sight entrancing, 
When morning's beam is glancing 

O'er files array'd, 

With helm and blade, 
And in Freedom's cause advancing ! 



AFTER DEFEAT. 

Night closed around the conqueror's way. 

And lightnings shovv'd the distant hill 
Where those who lost that dreadful day 

Stood, few and faint, but fearless still : 
The soldier's hope, the patriot's zeal, 

For ever dimm'd, for ever cross'd, — 
O ! who shall say what heroes feel 

When all but life and honour's lost ? 

The last sad hours of Freedom's dream 

And Valour's task moved slowly by. 
While mute they watch'd, till morning's beam 

Should rise and give them light to die. 
There's yet a world where souls are free. 

Where Tyrants taint not Nature's bliss : 
If death that world's bright opening be, 

O ! who would live a slave in this ? 



HORACE SMITH. 55 I 

HORACE SMITH. 

1779— 1849. 



HYMN OF THE FLOWERS. 

Day Stars ! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle 
•From rainbow galaxies of Earth's creation, 
And dew-drops on her lonely altars sprinkle 
As a libation : 

Ye Matin Worshipers ! who, bending lowly 
Before the uprisen Sun, God's lidless eye. 
Throw from your chalices a sweet and holy 
Incense on high : 

Ye bright Mosaics ! that with storied beauty 
The floor of Nature's temple tesselate : 
What numerous emblems of instructive duty 
Your forms create ! 

'Neath cloistered boughs each floral bell that swingeth 
And tolls its perfume on the passing air 
Makes Sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth 
A call to prayer : 

Not to the domes where crumbling arch and column 
Attest the feebleness of mortal hand. 
But to that fane most catholic and solemn 
Which God hath plann'd, — 

To that cathedral, boundless as our wonder, 
Whose quenchless lamps the sun and moon supply, 
Its choir the winds and waves, its organ thunder, 
Its dome the sky. 

There, as in solitude and shade I wander 
Through the green aisles or stretch'd upon the sod. 
Awed by the silence, reverently ponder 
The ways of God, 



S6 HORACE SMITH. 

Your voiceless lips, O Flowers ! are living preachers, 
Each cup a pulpit and each leaf a book, 
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 
From loneliest nook. 

Floral Apostles ! that in dewy splendour 
*' Weep without woe and blush without a crime : " 
O may I deeply learn, and ne'er surrender 
Your lore sublime ! 

" Thou wast not, Solomon ! in all thy glory 
Array'd," the lilies cry, " in robes like ours : 
How vain your grandeur ! ah, how transitory 
Are human flowers ! " 

In the sweet-scented pictures, Heavenly Artist ! 
With which thou paintest Nature's wide-spread hall, 
What a delightful lesson thou impartest 
Of love to all ! 

Not useless are ye, Flowers ! though made for pleasure ; 
Blooming o'er field and wave, by day and night, 
From every source your sanction bids me treasure 
Harmless delight. 

Ephemeral Sages ! what instructors hoary 
For such a world of thought could furnish scope ? 
Each fading calyx a memento mori. 
Yet fount of hope ! 

Posthumous Glories ! angel-like collection. 
Upraised from seed or bulb interr'd in earth : 
Ye are to me a type of resurrection 
And second birth. 

Were I in church-less solitudes remaining, 
Far from all voice of teachers or divines. 
My soul would find in flowers, of God's ordaining. 
Priests, sermons, shrines. 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 57 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 

1781 — 1849. 



FLOWERS FOR THE HEART. 

Flowers ! winter flowers ! The child is dead, 

The mother can not speak. 
O, softly couch his little head ! 

Or Mary's heart will break. 
Amid those curls of flaxen hair 

This pale pink ribbon twine ; 
And on the little bosom there 

Place this wan lock of mine ! 
How like a form in cold white stone 

The coffin'd infant lies ! 
Look, Mother ! on thy little one : j| 

And tears will fill thine eyes. 
She can not weep ; more faint she grows, i 

More deadly pale and still : — j 

Flowers ! O, a flower ! a winter rose, j 

That tiny hand to fill. ) 

Go, search the fields ! the lichen wet J 

Bends o'er the unfailing well ; 1 

Beneath the furrow lingers yet J 

The scarlet pimpernel. \ 

Peeps not a snowdrop in the bower ' 

Where never froze the spring ? 
A daisy ? Ah, bring childhood's flower! ■ 

The half-blown daisy bring ! ;j 

Yes ! lay the daisy's little head !' 

Beside the little cheek ; % 

O haste ! The last of five is dead : M 

The childless can not speak. if! 



i 

58 EBENEZER ELLIOTT. | 

TI/£ BRAMBLE-FLOWER. 

I 

Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows, \ 

Wild bramble of the brake ! \ 

So put thou forth thy small white rose ! ! 

I love it for his sake. 

Though woodbines flaunt and roses glow < 

O'er all the fragrant bowers, 

Thou need'st not be ashamed to show j 

Thy satin-threaded flowers : ^ 
For dull the eye, the heart is dull, 

That can not feel how fair, 
Amid all beauty beautiful, 

Thy tender blossoms are ; 
How delicate thy gauzy frill, 

How rich thy branchy stem, ' 

How soft thy voice when woods are still i 

And thou sing'st hymns to them, \ 

While silent showers are falling slow \ 

And, 'mid the general hush, ) 

A sweet air lifts the little bough, ^ 

Lone whispering through the bush ! i 
The primrose to the grave is gone; 

The hawthorn flower is dead ; \ 

The violet by the moss'd grey stone \ 

Hath laid her weary head : j 
But thou, wild bramble ! back dost bring, 

In all their beauteous power, ■ 

The fresh green days of life's fair Spring j 

And boyhood's blossomy hour. ■ 

Scorn'd bramble of the brake ! once more 1 

Thou bidd'st me be a boy, , 

To gad with thee, the woodlands o'er, j 

In freedom* and in joy. i 



EBENEZER ELLIOTT. 59 



ELEGY ON WILLIAM COBBETT. 

O bear him where the rain can fall, 

And where the winds can blow ; 
And let the sun weep o'er his pall 

As to the grave ye go ! 

And in some little lone churchyard, 

Beside the growing corn, 
Lay gentle Nature's stern prose bard, 

Her mightiest peasant-born ! 

Yes ! let the wild-flower wed his grave. 

That bees may murmur near. 
When o'er his last home bend the brave, 

And say — " A man lies here ! " 

For Britons honour Cobbett's name, 

Though rashly oft he spoke ; 
And none can scorn, and few will blame. 

The low-laid heart of oak. 

See, o'er his prostrate branches, see ! 

E'en factious hate consents 
To reverence, in the fallen tree, 

His British lineaments. 

Though gnarl'd the storm -tost boughs that braved 

The thunder's gather'd scowl, 
Not always through his darkness raved 

The storm-winds of the soul. 

O, no ! in hours of golden calm 

Morn met his forehead bold ; 
And breezy evening sang her psalm 

Beneath his dew-dropp'd gold. 

The wren its crest of fibred fire 
With his rich bronze compared; 



6o EBENEZER ELLIOTli 

While many a youngling's songful sire 1 

His acorn'd twiglets shared. \ 

The lark, above, sweet tribute paid, ■ 

Where clouds with light were riven ; i 

And true love sought his blue-bell'd shade, i 

" To bless the hour of heaven." i 

E'en when his stormy voice was loud, j 

And guilt quaked at the sound, \ 

Beneath the frown that shook the proud ! 

The poor a shelter found. ' 

Dead Oak ! thou livest. Thy smitten hands. 

The thunder of thy brow, j 

Speak, with strange tongues, in many lands, I 

And tyrants hear thee, now ! ' 

Beneath the shadow of thy name, ,1 

Inspired by thy renown, ' 

Shall future patriots rise to fame, ] 

And many a sun go down. j 

\ 
■1 

HANNAH RATCLIFFE. \ 

If e'er she knew an evil thought, ! 

She spoke no evil word : 

Peace to the gentle ! She hath sought .1 

The bosom of her Lord. ; 

I 

She lived to love, and loved to bless 

Whatever He hath made ; * 

But early on her gentleness ' 
His chastening hand he laid. 

Like a maim'd linnet nursed with care. 

She graced a home of bliss ; ' 

And dwelt in thankful quiet there, j 
To show what croodness is. 



JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. 6l 

Her presence was a noiseless power, 

That soothed us day by day, — 
A modest, meek, secluded flower, 

That smiled, and pass'd away. 

So meek she was that, when she died, 

We miss'd the lonely one 
As when we feel, on Loxley's side, 

The silent sunshine gone. 

But memory brings to sunless bowers 

The light they knew before ; 
And Hannah's quiet smile is ours, 

Though Hannah is no more. 

Her pale face visits yet my heart. 

And oft my guest will be : 
O White Rose ! thou shalt not depart. 

But wither here with me. 

JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. 

1784— 1859. 



ABO (7 BEN AD HEM. 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !) 
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, 
And saw within the moonlight in his room, 
Making it rich and like a lily in bloom, 
An Angel waiting in a book of gold. 
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold ; 
And to the Presence in the room he said — 
What writest thou ? " The Vision raised its head ; 
And, with a look made of all sweet accord, 
Answer'd — " The names of those who love the Lord. 
And is mine one ? " said Abou. '' Nay ! not so ! " 
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low. 
But cheerly still, and said — " I pray thee then, 
Write me as One that loves his fellow men ! " 



62 JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. 

1 
The Angel wrote, and vanish'd. The next night ' 

It came again, with a great wakening hght, 
And show'd their names whom love of God had bless'd : 
And lo ! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest. 



SONG OF PEACE. 

O Thou that art our Queen again, 
And may in the sun be seen again, 

Come, Ceres ! come ! 

For the war's gone home, 
And the fields are quiet and green again. 

The air, dear Goddess ! sighs for thee ; 
The light-heart brooks arise for thee ; 

And the poppies red 

On their wistful bed 
Turn up their dark blue eyes for thee. 

Laugh out, in the loose green jerkin 
That's fit for a Goddess to work in I 

With shoulders brown. 

And the wheaten crown 
About thy temples perking. 

And with thee come Stout-Heart in; 
And Toil, that sleeps his cart in ; 

And Exercise, 

The ruddy and wise. 
His bathed forelocks parting ! 

And Dancing too, that's lither 
Than willow or birch, drop hither ! 

To thread the place 

With a finishing grace 
And carry our smooth eyes with her. 



JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. 6^ 

A NUN. 

If you become a Nun, Dear! 

A Friar I will be : 
In any cell you run, Dear ! 

Pray look behind for me ! 
The roses all turn pale too ; 
The doves all take the veil too ; 

The blind will see the show : 
What! you become a Nun? my Dear! 

I'll not believe it. No ! 

If you become a Nun, Dear! 

The bishop Love will be ; 
The Cupids, every one, Dear ! 

Will chant—" We trust in thee ! " 
The incense will go sighing ; 
The candles fall a-dying ; 

The water turn to wine : 
What ! You go take the vows ? my Dear ! 

You may, — but they'll be mine. 

GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. 

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass. 

Catching your heart up at the feel of June, — 

Sole voice that's heard amidst the lazy noon, 

When even the bees lag at the summoning brass ! 

And you, warm little housekeeper ! who class 

With those who think the candles come too soon, 

Loving the fire, and with your tricksome tune 

Nick the glad silent moments as they pass : 

O sweet and tiny cousins ! that belong, 

One to the fields, the other to the hearth : 

Both have your sunshine ; both, though small, are strong 

At your clear hearts ; and both were sent on earth 

To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song, 

In-doors and out, summer and winter. Mirth. 



64 JAMES HENRY LEIGH HUNT. 

TO HIS WIFE, 

While she mas morieling the Poefs bust. 

Ah, Marian mine ! the face you look on now 
Is not exactly like my wedding-day's : 
Sunk is its cheek, deeper-retired its gaze, 
Less white and smooth its temple-flatten'd brow. 
Sorrow has been there with his silent plough 
And strait stern hand. No matter ! if it raise 
Aught that affection fancies it may praise, 
Or make me worthier of Apollo's bough. 
Loss after all, such loss especially. 
Is transfer, change, but not extinction. No ! 
Part in our children's apple-cheeks I see ; 
And for the rest, — while you look at me so. 
Take care you do not smile it back to me, 
And miss the copied furrows as you go ! 

TO HIS PIANO-FORTE. 

Friend ! whom glad or grave we seek, 

Heaven-holding shrine ! 

1 ope thee, touch thee, hear thee speak, 

And peace is mine. 
No fairy casket full of bliss 

Outvalues thee : 
Love only, waken'd with a kiss, 

More sweet may be. 

To thee, when our full hearts o'erflow 

In griefs or joys. 
Unspeakable emotions owe 

A fitting voice : 
Mirth flies to thee, and Love's unrest, 

And Memory dear ; 
And Sorrow, with his tighten'd breast. 

Comes for a tear. 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 6$ 

O, since few joys of human mould 

Thus wait us still, 
Thrice bless'd be thine, thou gentle fold 

Of peace at will ! 
No change, no sullenness, no cheat, 

In thee we find : 
Thy saddest voice is ever sweet, 

Thine answer kind. 



ALLAN CUNNINGHAM. 

1784— 1842. 



THE SUN IN FRANCE, 

The sun rises bright in France, 

And fair sets he : 
But he has tint the blithe blink he had 

In my ain countree. 

O, it's nae my ain ruin 

That saddens aye my ee, 
But the dear Marie I left behin' 

Wi' sweet bairnies three. 

My lanely hearth burn'd bonnie, 
And smiled my ain Marie : 

I've left a' my heart behin' 
In my ain countree. 

The bud comes back to summer, 
And the blossom to the bee ; 

But I'll win back O, never ! 

To my ain countree. 

O I am leal to high Heaven, 

Where soon I hope to be : 
And there I'll meet ye a' 

Frae my ain countree. 
n— 5 



1^ 



66 GEORGE DARLEY 

GEORGE DARLEY. 
1785—1849- 



WAKING SONG. 

Awake thee, my Lady- Love ! 

Wake thee, and rise ! 
The sun through the bower peeps 

Into thine eyes. 

Behold how the early lark 

Springs from the corn ! 
Hark, hark how the flower-bird 

Winds her wee horn ! 

The swallow's glad shriek is heard 

All through the air ; 
The stock-dove is murmuring 

Loud as she dare. 

Apollo's wing'd bugleman 

Can not contain, 
But peals his loud trumpet-call 

Once and again. 

Then wake thee, my Lady-Love ! 

Bird of my bower ! 
The sweetest and sleepiest 

Bird at this hour. 



SYLVIA'S SONG. 

The streams that wind amid the hills 

And lost in pleasure slowly roam, 
While their deep joy the valley fills, — 

Even these will leave their mountain home ; 
So may it. Love ! with others be. 
But I will never wend from thee. 



GEORGE DARLEY. 6/ 

The leaf forsakes the parent spray, 

The blossom quits the stem as fast ; 
The rose-enamour'd bird will stray 
And leave his eglantine at last : 

So may it, Love ! with others be. 
But I will never wend from thee. 



DIRGE. 

Wail ! wail ye o'er the Dead ! 

Wail, wail ye o'er her ! 
Youth's ta'en and Beauty's fled : 

O then deplore her ! 

Strew ! strew, ye Maidens ! strew 
Sweet flowers and fairest : 

Pale rose, and pansy blue, 
Lily the rarest ! 

Wail ! 

Lay, lay her gently down 

On her moss pillow. 
While we our foreheads crown 

With the sad willow ! 

Wail ! 

Raise, raise the song of woe. 
Youths ! to her honour ; 

Fresh leaves and blossoms throw. 
Virgins ! upon her. 

Wail ! 

Round, round the cypress bier 
Where she lies sleeping, 

On every turf a tear. 
Let us go, weeping ! 

Wail ! 



p 



3 
68 THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. ' 



THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK. 

1785— 1866. 



CASTLES IN THE AIR. 

My thoughts by night are often fill'd 

With visions false as fair : 
For in the Past alone I build 

My castles in the air. 

I dwell not now on what may be ; 

Night shadows o'er the scene : 
But still my fancy wanders free 

Through that which might have been. 

DAYS OF OLD. 

In the days of old 
Lovers felt true passion, 
Deeming years of sorrow 
By a smile repaid : 
Now the charms of gold, 
Spells of pride and fashion. 
Bid them say Good-morrow 
To the best-loved Maid. 

Through the forests Avild, 
O'er the mountains lonely, 
They were never weary 
Honour to pursue : 
If the Damsel smiled 
Once in seven years only. 
All their wanderings dreary 
Ample guerdon knew. 

Now one day's caprice 
Weighs down years of smiling. 
Youthful hearts are rovers, 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 6g 

Love is bought and sold. 
Fortune's gifts may cease, 
Love is less beguiling : 
Wiser were the lovers 
In the days of old. 

MARGARET LOVE PEACOCK. 

Three years old. 

Long night succeeds thy little day : 

O, blighted blossom ! can it be 
That this grey stone and grassy clay 

Have closed our anxious care of thee ? 

The half-form'd speech of artless thought, 
That spoke a mind beyond thy years. 

The song, the dance by Nature taught, 
The sunny smiles, the transient tears, 

The symmetry of face and form, 

The eye with light and life replete, 

The little heart so fondly warm, 

The voice so musically sweet, — 

These, lost to hope, in memory yet 

Around the hearts that loved thee cling, 

Shadowing with long and vain regret 
The too fair promise of thy Spring. 

BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 

(" BARRY CORNWALL.") 
1787— 1874. 



THE STORMY PETREL. 

A thousand miles from land are we, 
Tossing about on the roaring sea, — 
From billow to bounding billow cast. 



70 BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. I 

J 
Like fleecy snow on the stormy blast : j 

The sails are scatter'd abroad like weeds ; i 

The strong masts shake like quivering reeds ; j 

The mighty cables and iron chains, ' 

The hull, which all earthly strength disdains, — 
They strain and they crack : and hearts like stone 
Their natural hard proud strength disown. 

Up and down ! up and down ! i 

From the base of the wave to the billow's crown : ] 

And amidst the flashing and feathery foam ] 

The Stormy Petrel finds a home : 

A home, if such a place may be 

For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, 

On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, ^ 

And only seeketh her rocky lair ; 

To warm her young and to teach them spring 

At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing. " 

O'er the deep ! o'er the deep ! 1 
Where the whale and the shark and the sword-fish sleep, — ' 
Outflying the blast and the driving rain. 
The Petrel telleth her tale — in vain : 

For the mariner curseth the warning bird j 

Who bringeth him news of the storms unheard. j 

Ah, thus does the prophet of good or ill i 

Meet hate from the creatures he serveth still ! ' 

Yet he ne'er falters. So, Petrel ! spring \ 

Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing ! 1 



TO O UR NEIGHB OUR'S HEAL TIL 



Send the red wine round to-night ! 

For the blast is bitter cold : 
Let us sing a song that's light ! 

Merry rhymes are good as gold. 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. Jl 

Here's unto Our Neighbour's health ! 

he plays the better part, — 
Doing good, but not by stealth : 

Is he not a noble heart ? 

Should you bid me tell his name, 

Show wherein his virtues dwell : 
'Faith (I speak it to my shame), 

1 should scarce know what to tell. 

'' Is he—? " Sir ! he is a thing 

Cast in common human clay, — 
'Tween a beggar and a king, — 
Fit to order or obey. 

** He is then a soldier brave ? " 
No ! he doth not kill his kin, 
Pampering the luxurious Grave 
With the blood and bones of Sin. 

" Or a judge ? " He doth not sit, 

Making hucksters' bargains plain ; 
Piercing cobwebs with his wit, 
Cutting tangled knots in twain. 

*' He's an Abbot then at least ? " 
No ! he is not proud and blithe, 
Leaving prayer to humble priest, 
Whilst he champs the golden tithe. 

He is brave, but he is meek, — 

Not as judge or soldier seems. 
Not like Abbot proud and sleek : 

Yet his dreams are starry dreams, — 

Such as lit the World of old 

Through the darkness of her way ; 



72 BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 

Such as might, if clearly told, 
Guide blind Future into day. 

Never hath he sought to rise 

On a friend's or neighbour's fall ; 

Never slurr'd a foe with lies ; 

Never shrunk from Hunger's call : 

But from morning until eve, 

And through Autumn into Spring, 

He hath kept his course (believe !), 
Courting neither slave nor king. 

He, whatever be his name 

(For I know it not aright), 
He deserves a wider fame. 

Come ! here's to his health to-night. 



BA C GHANA LI AN, 

Sing! — Who sings 

To her who weareth a hundred rings ? 

Ah, who is this lady fine ? j 

The Vine, boys ! the Vine ! \ 

The mother of mighty Wine. ' 

A roamer is she \ 

O'er wall and tree, .: 

And sometimes very good company. j 

Drink ! — Who drinks i 
To her who blusheth and never thinks ? 

Ah, who is this maid of thine ? i 

The Grape, boys ! the Grape ! j 

O never let her escape ] 

Until she be turn'd to Wine ! .] 

For better is she J 

Than Vine can be, j 

And very very good company. ) 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. Tl 

Dream ! — Who dreams 

Of the God who governs a thousand streams ? 
Ah, who is this Spirit fine ? 
'Tis Wine, boys ! 'tis Wine ! 
God Bacchus, a friend of mine. 
O, better is he 
Than Grape or Tree, 
And the best of all good company. 

SONG. 

Let us sing and sigh ! 

Let us sigh and sing ! 
Sunny haunts have no such pleasures 

As the shadows bring. 

Who would seek the crowd. 

Who would seek the noon, 
That could woo the pale maid Silence 

Underneath the moon ? 

Smiles are things for youth, 

Things for a merry rhyme : 
But the voice of Pity suiteth 

Any mood or time. 

I LOVE HIM. 

I love him, I dream of him, 

I sing of him by day, 
And all the night I hear him talk, — 

And yet, he's far away. 

There's beauty in the morning ; 

There's sweetness in the May ; 
There's music in the running stream : 

And yet, he's far away. 



74 BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 

I love him, I trust in him ; 

He trusteth me alway : 
And so the time flies hopefully, 

Although he's far away. 



IGNORANCE IS BLISS. 

Rains fall, suns shine, winds flee. 
Brooks run ; yet few know how : 

Do not thou too deeply search 
Why thou lovest me now ! 

Perhaps, by some command 
Sent earthward from above, 

Thy heart was doom'd to lean on mine. 
Mine to enjoy thy love. 

Why ask when joy doth smile. 
From what bright heaven it fell ? 

Men mar the beauty of their dreams, 
Tracing their source too well. 



SHE WAS NOT FAIR, \ 

'\ 

She was not fair, nor full of grace, j 

Nor crown'd with thought or aught beside, ' 

No wealth had she of mind or face, 

To win our love or raise our pride ; \ 

No lover's thought her cheek did touch, 1 

No poet's dream was round her thrown : | 

And yet we miss her, — ah ! too much, j 

Now she hath flown. ' 

We miss her when the morning calls, I 

As one that mingled in our mirth ; 
We miss her when the evening falls, — 

A trifle wanted on the earth : 



BRYAN WALLER PROCTER. 75 

Some fancy small or subtle thought 
Is check'd ere to its blossom grown, 

Some chain is broken that we wrought, — 
Now she hath flown. 

No solid good nor hope defined 

Is marr'd now she hath sunk in night ; 
And yet the strong immortal Mind 

Is stopp'd in its triumphant flight. 
Stern friend ! what power is in a tear, 

What strength in one poor thought alone, 
When all we know is — She was here 

And She hath flown ! 



THE POET TO HIS WIFE. 

How many summers. Love ! 

Have I been thine ? 
How many days, thou Dove I 

Hast thou been mine ? 
Time, like the winged wind 

When it bends the flowers, 
Hath left no mark behind 

To count the hours. 

Some weight of thought, though loath, 

On thee he leaves ; 
Some lines of care round both 

Perhaps he weaves ; 
Some fears, a soft regret 

For joys scarce known ; 
Sweet looks we half forget : 

All else is flown. 

Ah ! with what thankless heart 

I mourn and sing ! 
Look, where our children start 

Like sudden Spring ! 



^6 RICHARD HENRY DANA. 

With tongues all sweet and low, 

Like a pleasant rhyme, 
They tell how much I owe 

To Thee and Thine. 



RICHARD HENRY DANA. 

1787— 1879. 



THE LITTLE BEACHBIRD. \ 

Thou little bird ! thou dweller by the sea ! j 

Why takest thou its melancholy voice, I 

And with that boding cry 1 

O'er the waves dost thou fly ? 
O rather, bird ! with me 

Through the fair land rejoice ! : 

Thy flitting form comes ghostly dim and pale, j 

As driven by the beating storm at sea ; J 

Thy cry is weak and scared, | 

As if thy mates had shared j 

The doom of us ; thy wail — 

What does it bring to me ? 

Thou call'st along the sand and haunt'st the surge, ; 

Restless and sad, as if, in strange accord * 

With the motion and the roar ' 

Of waves that drive to shore, ' 

One spirit did ye urge, — i 

The Mystery— the Word. j 

Of thousands thou both sepulchre and pall, • 

Old Ocean ! art. A requiem o'er the dead j 

From out thy gloomy cells \ 

A tale of mourning tells : \ 

Tells of man's woe and fall, 

His sinless glory fled. 1 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON. ^^ 

Then turn thee, httle bird ! and take thy flight 
Where the complaining sea shall sadness bring 

Thy spirit never more ! 

Come, quit with me the shore 
For gladness and the light 
Where birds of summer sing ! 

GEORGE GORDON BYRON (LORD BYRON). 

1788— 1824. 



THE ISLES OF GREECE. 

The Isles of Greece ! the Isles of Greece ! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung, — 
Where grew the arts of war and peace, 

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet : 
But all except their sun is set. 

The Scian and the Teian muse, 
The hero's harp, the lover's lute, 

Have found the fame your shores refuse ; 
Their place of birth alone is mute 

To sounds which echo further West 

Than your sires' '' Islands of the Bless'd." 

The mountains look on Marathon, 
And Marathon looks on the sea ; 

And musing there an hour alone 

I dream'd that Greece might still be free : 

For standing on the Persians' grave 

I could not deem myself a slave. 

A King sate on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis, 

And ships by thousands lay below, 
And men in nations, — all were his ; 

He counted them at break of day ; 

But when the sun set where were they ? 



fS GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

And where are they ? And where art thou ? 

My Country ! On thy voiceless shore 
The heroic lay is tuneless now, 

The heroic bosom beats no more. 
And must thy lyre, so long divine, 
Degenerate into hands like mine ? 

'Tis something in the dearth of fame, 
Though link'd among a fetter'd race, 

To feel at least a patriot's shame. 
Even as I sing, suffuse my face : 

For what is left the poet here ? 

For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o'er days more bless'd ? 

Must we but blush ? Our fathers bled. 
Earth ! render back from out thy breast 

A remnant of our Spartan dead ! 
Of the Three Hundred grant but three, 
To make a new Thermopylas ! 

What ! silent still ? and silent all ? 

Ah, no ! the voices of the Dead 
Sound like a distant torrent's fall. 

And answer — ^' Let one living head, 
But one arise, — we come, we come ! " 
'Tis but the living who are dumb. 

In vain ! in vain ! — Strike other chords ! 

Fill high the cup with Samian wine ! 
Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, 

And shed the blood of Scio's vine ! 
Hark ! rising to the ignoble call. 
How answers each bold Bacchanal ! 

You have the Pyrrhic dance as yet : 

Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone ? 
Of two such lessons, why forget 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 79 

l| 

The nobler and the manlier one ? j 
You have the letters Cadmus gave : 

Think ye he mean'd them for a slave ? ! 

'I 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! j 

We will not think of themes like these. 

It made Anacreon's song divine ; i 

He served but served Polycrates : '' 

A tyrant, — but our masters then "j. 

Were still at least our countrymen. . ; 

The tyrant of the Chersonese "'• 

Was Freedom's best and bravest friend : ^ 

That tyrant was Miltiades : I 

O that the present hour would lend ) 

Another despot of the kind ! iS 

Such chains as his were sure to bind. ' 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! t; 

On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, . j 

Exists the remnant of a line | 

Such as the Doric mothers bore ; :5 

And there perhaps som^ seed is sown ;. 

The Heracleidan blood might own. ji 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks ! 5 

They have a king who buys and sells : '; 

In native swords and native ranks ; 

The only hope of courage dwells ; ! 

But Turkish force and Latin fraud I 

Would break your shield however broad. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! N 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade : J 

I see their glorious black eyes shine ; || 

But, gazing on each glowing maid, 'j 

My own the burning tear-drop laves, ij 

To think such breasts must suckle slaves. jj 



8o GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, 
Where nothing save the waves and I 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep ! 
There, swan-like, let me sing and die ! 

A Land of Slaves shall ne'er be mine : 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine ! 

TO THYRZA. 

And thou art dead ! as young and fair 

As aught of mortal birth : 
And form so soft, and charms so rare, 

Too soon return'd to Earth. 
Though Earth received them in her bed, 
And o'er the spot the crowd may tread 

In carelessness of mirth, 
There is an eye which could not brook 
A moment on that grave to look. 

I will not ask where thou liest low, 

Nor gaze upon the spot : 
There flowers or weeds at will may grow. 

So I behold them not. 
It is enough for me to prove 
That what I loved, and long must love, 

Like common earth can rot. 
To me there needs no stone to tell 
'Tis Nothing that I loved so well. 

Yet did I love thee to the last, 

As fervently as thou 
Who didst not change through all the past. 

And canst not alter now. 
The love where Death has set his seal 
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal, 

Nor falsehood disavow ; 
And, what were worse, thou canst not see 
Or wrong or change or fault in me. 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 8l 

The better days of life were ours, 

The worst can be but mine ; 
The sun that cheers, the storm that lours. 

Shall never more be thine : 
The silence of that dreamless sleep 
I envy now too much to weep ; 

Nor need I to repine 
That all those charms have pass'd away 
I might have watch'd through long decay. 

The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd 

Must fall the earliest prey ; 
Though by no hand untimely snatch'd, 

The leaves must drop away : 
And yet it were a greater grief 
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf, 

Than see it plucked to-day, — 
Since earthly eye but ill can bear 
To trace the change to foul from fair. 

I know not if I could have borne 

To see thy beauties fade : 
The night that follow'd such a morn 

Had worn a deeper shade. 
Thy day without a cloud hath pass'd. 
And thou wert lovely to the last, 

Extinguish'd, not decay'd : 
As stars that shoot along the sky 
Shine brightest as they fall from high. 

As once I wept — if I could weep, 

My tears might well be shed 
To think I was not near to keep 

One vigil o'er thy bed ; 
To gaze, how fondly ! on thy face, 
To fold thee in a faint embrace. 

Uphold thy drooping head, 

II.— 6 



32 GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

And show that love, however vain, 
Nor thou nor I can feel again. 

Yet how much less it were to gain 

(Though thou hast left me free) 
The loveliest things that still remain, 

Than thus remember thee : 
The all of thine that can not die 
Through dark and dread eternity 

Returns again to me ; 
And more thy buried love endears 
Than aught, except its living years. 

SONG OF SA UL. 

BEFORE HIS LAST BATTLE. 

Warriors and chiefs ! should the shaft or the sword 
Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord, 
Heed not the corse, though a king's, in your path ! 
Bury your steel in the bosoms of Oath ! 

Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow ! 
Should the soldiers of Saul look away from the foe. 
Stretch me that moment in blood at thy feet ! 
Mine be the doom which they dared not to meet ! 

Farewell to others ! but never we part. 
Heir to my royalty, son of my heart ! 
Bright is. the diadem, boundless the sway,— 
Or kingly the death which awaits us to-day. 

THE PATRIOT, 
Thy days are done, thy fame begun ; 

Thy country's strains record 
The triumphs of her chosen son. 

The slaughters of his sword : 
The deeds he did, the fields he won. 

The freedom he restored. 



GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 3^ 

Though thou art fallen, while we are free 

Thou shalt not taste of death : 
The generous blood that flow'd from thee 

Disdain'd to sink beneath; 
Within our veins its currents be, 

Thy spirit in our breath. 

Thy name, our charging hosts along, 

Shall be the battle-word ; 
Thy fall the theme of choral song 

From virgin voices pour'd : 
To weep would do thy glory wrong,— 

Thou shalt not be deplored ! 

SHE WALKS IN BE A UTY. 
She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless cHmes and starry skies, 
And all that's best of dark and bright 
Meets in her aspect and her eyes : 
Thus mellow'd to that tender light 
Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 
Had half impair'd the nameless grace 
Which waves in every raven tress 
Or softly lightens o'er her face, 
Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow. 

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent. 

The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent,— 

A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent. 



84 GEORGE GORDON BYRON. 

BYRON'S LAST VERSE. 

" On this day I complete my thirty-sixth year." 

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, 
Since others it hath ceased to move : 
Yet, though I can not be beloved. 
Still let me love ! 

My days are in the yellow leaf; 

The flowers and fruits of love are gone : 
The worm, the canker, and the grief, 
Are mine alone. 

The fire that on my bosom preys 

Is lone as some volcanic isle : 
No torch is kindled at its blaze, — 
A funeral pile. 

The hope, the fear, the jealous care. 

The exalted portion of the pain 
And power of love, I can not share, 
But wear the chain. 

But 'tis not thus, and 'tis not here, 

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now, — 
Where glory decks the hero's bier 
Or binds his brow. 

The sword, the banner, and the field, — 

Glory and Greece, around me see ! 
The Spartan borne upon his shield 
Was not more free. 

Awake not Greece ! she is awake : 

Awake, my Spirit ! Think through whom 
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake. 
And then strike home ! 

Tread those reviving passions down. 
Unworthy manhood ! Unto thee 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 85 

Indifferent should the smile or frown 
Of Beauty be. 

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live ? 

The land of honourable death 
Is here. Up, to the field, and give 
Away thy breath ! 

Seek out (less often sought than found) 

A soldier's grave, for thee the best ! 
Then look around, and choose thy ground, 
And take thy rest ! 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
1792 — 1822. 



TO A SKYLARK. 

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert. 
That from heaven, or near it, 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest ; 

Like a cloud of fire, 

The blue deep thou wingest ; 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun. 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 

Thou dost float and run. 
Like an unbodied Joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 
Melts around thy flight : 



86 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

Like a star of heaven 
In the broad daylight, 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight : 

Keen as are the arrows 
Of that silver sphere 
Whose intense lamp narrows 
In the white dawn clear 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 

From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow'd. 

What thou art we know not : 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 

Drops so bright to see 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace tower. 
Soothing her love-laden 

Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower. 

Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden 

Its atrial hue 
Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 8/ 

Like a rose embower'd 

In its own green leaves, 
By warm winds deflower'd, 

Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves. 

Sound of vernal showers 

On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awaken'd flowers, 

All that ever was 
Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird ! 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 

Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus hymeneal. 

Or triumphal chant, 
Match'd with thine would be all 

But an empty vaunt, 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain ? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 

What shapes of sky or plain ? 
What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ? 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor can not be ; 
Shadow of annoyance 

Never came near thee ; 
Thou lov^st, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 

Waking or asleep. 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 



88 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. : 

Than we mortals dream, i 

Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? ' 

We look before and after, i 

And pine for what is not ; I 

Our sincerest laughter i 

With some pain is fraught ; ' 

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. | 

Yet, if we could scorn i 

Hate and pride and fear, \ 

If we were things born ^ 

Not to shed a tear, i 

I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. \ 

Better than all measures | 

Of delightful sound, - 

Better than all treasures 

That in books are found, , 

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! ; 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 

From my lips would flow, • J 
The world should listen then as I am listening now. 

LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR. 
I arise from dreams of Thee, 

In the first sweet sleep of night, ] 

When the winds are breathing low, i 

And the stars are shining bright : : 

I arise from dreams of Thee, < 

And a spirit in my feet ^ 

Has led me (who knows how ?) 1 

To thy chamber window. Sweet ! \ 

The wandering airs, they faint ' 

On the dark and silent stream, \ 

\ 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. " 89 

The champak odours pine 
Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
The nightingale's complaint, 
It dies upon her heart, — 
As I must die on thine. 
Beloved as thou art ! 

O, lift me from the grass ! 
I die ! I faint ! I fail ! 
Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale ! 
My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
My heart beats loud and fast : 
O, press it close to thine again, 
Where it will break at last. 

TO NIGHT. 

Swiftly walk over the Western wave. 

Spirit of Night ! 
Out of the misty Eastern cave, 
Where all the long and lone daylight 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear. 
Which make thee terrible and dear : 

Swift be thy flight ! 

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, 

Star-inwrought ! 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day ! 
Kiss him until he be wearied out ! 
Then wander o'er city and sea and land. 
Touching all with thine opiate wand ! 

Come, long-sought ! 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

I sigh'd for thee : 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone. 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree ; 
And the weary Day turn'd to his rest. 



(( 



90 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 

Lingering like an unloved guest, 
I sigh'd for thee. 

Thy brother Death came, and cried — 

" Wouldst thou me ? " 
Thy sweet child, Sleep the filmy-eyed, 
Murmur'd like a noontide bee — 
Shall I nestle by thy side ? 
Wouldst thou me ? " And I replied — 

No ! not thee. 

Death will come when thou art dead. 

Soon, too soon ! 
Sleep will come when thou art fled : 
Of neither would I ask the boon 
I ask of thee, beloved Night ! 
Swift be thine approaching flight ! 

Come soon, soon ! 

A BRIDAL SONG. 
The golden gates of sleep unbar 

Where Strength and Beauty, met together. 
Kindle their image like a star 

In a sea of glassy weather ! 
Night ! with all thy stars look down ; 

Darkness ! weep thy holiest dew : 
Never smiled the inconstant Moon 

On a pair so true. 
Let eyes not see their own delight ! 
Haste, swift Hour ! and thy flight 
Oft renew ! 

Fairies ! sprites ! and angels ! keep her ; 

Holy stars ! permit no wrong ; 
And return to wake the sleeper, 

Dawn ! ere it be long. 
O joy ! O fear ! what will be done 
In the absence of the sun ? 

Come along ! 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. pi 



SONG. 

False Friend ! wilt thou smile or weep 
When my life is laid asleep ? 
Little cares for a smile or a tear 
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier. 

Farewell ! heigh ho ! 

What is this whispers low ? 
There is a snake in thy smile, my Dear ! 
And bitter poison within thy tear. 

Sweet Sleep ! were Death like to thee, 
Or if thou couldst mortal be, 
I would close these eyes of pain : 
When to wake ? Never again. 

O World ! farewell ! 

Listen to the passing bell ! 
It says thou and I must part. 
With a light and a heavy heart. 



POLITICAL GREATNESS. 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame. 

Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, 

Shepherd those herds whom Tyranny makes tame 

Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts ; 

History is but the shadow of their shame ; 

Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts. 

As to Oblivion their millions fleet 

Staining that heaven with obscene imagery 

Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit 

By force or custom ? Man, who man would be, 

Must rule the empire of himself ; in it 

Must be supreme, establishing his throne 

On vanquish'd will, quelling the anarchy 

Of hopes and fears, — being Himself alone. 



92 JOHN KEATS. 



A WAIL. 

Rough Wind ! that moanest loud 

Grief too sad for song, — 
Wild Wind, when sullen cloud 

Knells all the night long ! 
Sad Storm, whose tears are vain ! 
Bare Woods, whose branches strain ! 
Deep Caves ! and dreary Main ! 

Wail for the world's wrong ! 



JOHN KEATS. 

1795— 1821. 



HYMN TO FAN. 

O Thou ! whose mighty palace-roof doth hang 
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth 
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death, 
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness, — 
Who lovest to see the Hamadryads dress 
Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken, — 
And through whole solemn hours dost sit and hearken 
The dreary melody of bedded reeds. 
In desolate places where dank moisture breeds 
The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth, 
Bethinking thee how melancholy loath 
Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx, — do thou now, 
By thy Love's milky brow. 
By all the trembling mazes that she ran, 
Hear us, great Pan ! 

O Thou ! for whose soul-soothing quiet turtles 
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles. 
What time thou wanderest at eventide 
Through sunny meadows that outskirt the side 
Of thine enmossed realms, — O Thou ! to whom 



JOHN KEATS. 93 

Broad -leafed fig-trees even now foredoom 
Their ripen'd fruitage, yellow-girted bees 
Their golden honeycombs, our village leas 
Their fairest-blossom'd beans and poppied corn, 
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn 
(To sing for thee), low-creeping strawberries 
Their summer coolness, pent up butterflies 
Their freckled wings, — yea ! the fresh-budding year 
All its completions, — be quickly near! 
By every wind that nods the mountain pine, 
O forester divine ! 

Thou ! to whom every faun and satyr flies 
For willing service, whether to surprise 
The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit. 
Or upward ragged precipices flit 
To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw. 
Or by mysterious enticement draw 
Bewilder'd shepherds to their path again, 
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main 
And gather up all fancifullest shells 
For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells 
And (being hidden) laugh at their out-peeping, — 
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping 
The while they pelt each other on the crown 
With silvery oak-apples and fir-cones brown,- — 
By all the echoes that about thee ring, 
Hear us, O Satyr King ! 

O hearkener to the loud-clapping shears ! 
While ever and anon to his shorn peers 
A ram goes bleating, — winder of the horn ! 
When snouted wild boars, routing tender corn, 
Anger our huntsmen, — breather round our farms ! 
To keep off mildews and all weather harms, — 
Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds 
That come a-swooning over hollow grounds 
And wither drearily on barren moors ! 



94 JOHN KEATS. 

Dread opener of the mysterious doors 
Leading to universal knowledge ! see 
Great Son of Dryope ! 

The many that are come to pay their vows, 
With leaves about their brows. 

Be still the unimaginable lodge 

For solitary thinkings, such as dodge 

Conception to the very bourne of heaven, 

Then leave the naked brain ! be still the leaven 

That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth. 

Gives it a touch ethereal, a new birth ! 

Be still a symbol of immensity, 

A firmament reflected in a sea. 

An element filling the space between ! 

An unknown But, no more ! We humbly screen 

With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending. 
And, giving out a shout most heaven-rending. 
Conjure thee to receive our humble paean 
Upon thy Mount Lycean ! 

ROUNDELAY. 

O, Sorrow ! 

Why dost borrow 
The natural hue of health from vermeil lips ? — 

To give maiden blushes 

To the white rose bushes ? 
Or is it thy dewy hand the daisy tips ? 

O, Sorrow ! 

Why dost borrow 
The lustrous passion from a falcon eye ? — 

To give the glow-worm light ? 

Or on a moonless night 
To tinge, on syren shores, the salt sea- spry ? 

O, Sorrow! 
Why dost borrow 



JOHN KEATS. 95 

The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue ? — 

To give at evening pale 

Unto the nightingale, 
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among ? 

O, Sorrow ! 

Why dost borrow 
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May ? — 

A lover would not tread 

A cowslip on the head, 
Though he should dance from eve till peep of day, — 

Nor any drooping flower 

Held sacred for thy bower. 
Wherever he may sport himself and play. 

To Sorrow 

I bade Good-morrow ! 
And thought to leave her far away behind : 

But, cheerly ! cheerly ! 

She loves me dearly, — 
She is so constant to me and so kind : 

I would deceive her, 

And so leave her, 
But, ah ! she is so constant and so kind. 

Beneath my palm-trees, by the river side, 
I sat a-weeping : in the whole world wide 
There was no one to ask me why I wept ; 

And so I kept 
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears 

Cold as my fears. 

Beneath my palm-trees, by the river side, 
I sat a-weeping : what enamour'd bride. 
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds. 

But hides and shrouds 
Beneath dark palm-trees by a river side ? 



96 JOHN KEATS. 

And, as I sat, over the light blue hills 
There came a noise of revellers ; the rills 
Into the wide stream came of purple hue : — 

'Twas Bacchus and his crew ! 
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills 
From kissing cymbals made a merry din : 

'Twas Bacchus and his kin ! 
Like to a moving vintage down they came, 
Crown'd with green leaves, and faces all on flame ; 
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley, 

To scare thee. Melancholy ! 
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name, 
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly 
By shepherds is forgotten when in June 
Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon : — 

I rush'd into the folly. 

Within his car aloft young Bacchus stood, 
Trifling his ivy dart, in dancing mood. 

With sidelong laughing ; 
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued 
His plump white arms, and shoulders enough white 

For Venus' pearly bite ; 
And near him rode Silenus on his ass, 
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass 

Tipsily quaffing. 

Whence came ye ? merry Damsels ! whence came ye, 
So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
Why have ye left your bowers desolate. 

Your lutes, and gentler fate ? — 
** We follow Bacchus, Bacchus on the wing, 

A-conquering. 
Bacchus ! young Bacchus ! good or ill betide, 
We dance before him thorough kingdoms wide : 
Come hither, Lady fair ! and joined be 

To our wild minstrelsy ! " 



JOHN KEATS. 97 

Whence came ye ? jolly Satyrs ! whence came ye, 
So many, and so many, and such glee ? 
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left 

Your nuts in oak-tree cleft ? — 
" For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree ; 
For wine we left our heath and yellow brooms 

And cold mushrooms ; 
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth, — 
Great God of breathless cups and chirping mirth ! 
Come hither, Lady fair ! and joined be 

To our mad minstrelsy ! " 

Over wide streams and mountains great we went, 
And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent, 
Onward the tiger and the leopard pants. 

With Asian elephants ; 
Onward these myriads, with song and dance : 
With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance. 
Web-footed alligators, crocodiles 
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files, 
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil 
Of seamen and stout galley -rowers' toil : 
With toying oars and silken sails they glide, 

Nor care for wind and tide. 
Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes, 
From rear to van they scour about the plains, 
A three days' journey in a moment done ; 
And always, at the rising of the sun. 
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn, 

On spleenful unicorn. 

I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown 

Before the vine-wreath crown; 
I saw parch'd Abyssinia rouse and sing 

To the silver cymbals ring ; 
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce 

Old Tartary the fierce ; 

11.-7 



98 JOHN KEATS. 

The kings of Ind their jewel-sceptres vail, 
And from their treasures scatter pearled hail ; 
Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans, 

And all his priesthood moans, 
Before young Bacchus' eye-wink turning pale. 
Into these regions came I, following him. 
Sick-hearted, weary : so I took a whim 
To stray away into these forests drear, 

Alone, without a peer : 
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear. 

Young Stranger ! 

I've been a ranger f 

In search of pleasure throughout every clime : i 

Alas ! 'tis not for me ; ; 

Bewitch'd I sure must be I 
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime. 

Come then, Sorrow ! 

Sweetest Sorrow ! ' 

Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast : j 

I thought to leave thee, '; 

And deceive thee. 
But now of all the world I love thee best. 

There is not one, \ 

No ! no ! not one j 

But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid : i 

Thou art her mother, \ 

And her brother, li 

Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade. ] 

OjD£ on a GRECIAN URN. 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness ! 

Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time ! j 

Sylvan historian ! who canst thus express | 

'i 

\ 



JOHN KEATS. 99 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 

Of deities or mortals, or of both, 

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? 

What men, or Gods, are these ! what maidens loath ! 

What mad pursuit ! what struggle to escape ! 

What pipes and timbrels ! what wild ecstacy ! t 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 
Are sweeter : therefore, ye soft pipes ! play on, — 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, 
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone ! 
Fair youth beneath the trees ! thou canst not leave 
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare. 
Bold lover ! never, never canst thou kiss, 
Though winning near the goal ; yet do not grieve ! 
She can not fade, though thou hast not thy bliss : 
For ever wilt thou love and she be fair. 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that can not shed 
Your leaves nor ever bid the Spring adieu ; 
And happy melodist ! unwearied, 
For ever piping songs for ever new ; 
More happy love ! more happy happy love ! 
For ever warm, and still to be enjoy'd, 
For ever panting and for ever young, — 
All breathing human passion far above, 
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloy'd, 
A burning forehead and a parching tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 
To what green altar, O mysterious priest ! 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies. 
And all her silken flanks with garlands dress'd ? 
What little town, by river or sea-shore, 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of its folk this pious morn ? 



lOO JOHN KEATS. 

And, little town ! thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be ; and not a soul, to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 

O Attic shape ! fair attitude ! with brede 

Of marble men and maidens overwrought. 

With forest branches and the trodden weed. 

Thou, silent form ! dost tease us out of thought, 

As doth Eternity. Cold Pastoral ! 

When old age shall this generation waste, 

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 

Than ours, a friend to Man, to whom thou say'st — 

Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty : that is all 

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 



TO AUTUMN. 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! 

Close bosom-friend of the maturing Sun ! 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run 

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees. 

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

With a sweet kernel ; to set budding m.ore, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease, 

For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells. 

Who hath not seen Thee oft amid thy store ? 
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor. 
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep. 
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers ; 



JOHN KEATS. 1 01 

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
Steady thy laden head across a brook ; 
Or by a cider-press, with patient look, 
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay ! where are they ? 

Think not of them ! thou hast thy music too. 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue : 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 

Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft. 

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 



GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET. 

The poetry of earth is never dead ! 

When all the birds are faint with the hot sun. 

And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run 

From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead : 

That is the Grasshopper's, he takes the lead 

In summer luxury ; he has never done 

With his delights, for when tired out with fun 

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. 

The poetry of earth is ceasing never : 

On a lone winter evening, when the frost 

Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills 

The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever ; 

And seems to One in drowsiness half lost 

The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills, 



I02 CHARLES WOLFE. 

CHARLES WOLFE. 
1791—1823. 



THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE, 

On the rainparts of Corunna, 

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, 
As his corse to the ramparts we hurried ; 

Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot 
O'er the grave where our hero we buried. 

We buried him darkly at dead of night. 

The sods with our bayonets turning. 
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light 

And the lantern dimly burning. 

No useless coffin enclosed his breast. 

Nor in sheet or in shroud we wound him ; 

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest 
With his martial cloak around him. 

Few and short were the prayers we said, 

And we spoke not a word of sorrow ; 
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead, 

And we bitterly thought of the morrow. 

We thought, as we hollo w'd his narrow bed 

And smooth'd down his lonely pillow, 
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head, 

And we far away on the billow. 

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone, 

And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him ; 
But little he'll reck if they let him sleep on 

In the grave where a Briton has laid him. 

But half of our heavy task was done, 

When the clock struck the hour for retiring, 

And we heard the distant and random gun 
Of the enemy suddenly firing. 



FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. IO3 j 

''! 

Slowly and sadly we laid him down, |! 

From the field of his fame fresh and gory : ; , 

We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone, ■,, 

But we left him alone in his glory. ''] 

FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS. ' 

1793—1835. ^ 



J7£J^ GRAVE. \ 

Where shall we make her grave ? I 

O, where the wild flowers wave i 

In the free air : 

When shower and singing bird i 

'Midst the young leaves are heard, I 
There — lay her there ! 

Harsh was the world to her : i 

Now may sleep minister ; 

Balm for each ill ! ' 

Low on sweet Nature's breast i 

Let the meek heart find rest, , 

Deep, deep and still ! i 

Murmur, glad waters ! by ; ; 

Faint gales ! with happy sigh | 

Come wandering o'er '\^ 

That green and mossy bed, '; 
Where on a gentle head 

Storms beat no more. i 

What though for her in vain i 

Falls now the bright Spring rain, ' 

Plays the soft wind, \ 
Yet still from where she lies 
Should blessed breathings rise, 

Gracious and kind. ; 

Therefore let song and dew 
Thence in the heart renew 



104 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

Life's vernal glow ; 
And o'er that holy earth 
Scents of the violets' birth 

Still come and go ! 

O then, where wild flowers wave 
Make ye her mossy grave 

In the free air, 
Where shower and singing bird 
'Midst the young leaves are heard ! 

There, lay her there ! 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

1794— 1878. 

TO A WATER-FOWL, 

Whither, midst falling dew, 

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far through their rosy depths dost thou pursue 
Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 

Seek'st thou the plashy brink 

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide. 

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink 

On the chafed ocean-side ? 

There is a Power whose care 

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, — 

The desert and inimitable air 



All day thy wings have fann'd 

At that far height the cold thin atmosphere, 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. IO5 

Yet stoop not weary to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end : 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 
Soon, o'er thy shelter'd nest. 

Thou art gone, the abyss of heaven 
Hath swallow'd up thy form ; yet on my heart 
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
And shall not soon depart. 

He, who from zone to zone 

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 

In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright. 



TO THE FRINGED GENTIAN. 

Thou blossom ! bright with autumn dew, 
And colour'd with the heaven's own blue, 
That openest when the quiet light 
Succeeds the keen and frosty night : 

Thou com^st not when violets lean 

O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen, 

Or columbines, in purple dress'd. 

Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest ; 

Thou waitest late, and comest alone, 
When woods are bare and birds are flown, 
And frosts and shortening days portend 
The ag^d year is near his end. 

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye 
Look through its fringes to the sky : 
Blue, blue as if that sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall. 



I06 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 

I would that thus, when I shall see 
The hour of death draw near to me, ' 

Hope, blossoming within my heart, 
May look to heaven as I depart. 



HYMN OF THE CITY. \ 

Not in the solitude 
Alone may man commune with Heaven, or see 

Only in savage wood 
And sunny vale the present Deity, i 

Or only hear His voice \ 

Where the winds whisper and the waves rejoice. j 

Even here do I behold 
Thy steps. Almighty ! — here, amidst the crowd, j 

Through the great City roll'd j 

With everlasting murmur deep and loud, 

Choking the ways that wind \ 

'Mongst the proud piles, the work of human kind. 

Thy golden sunshine comes I 

From the round heaven, and on their dwellings lies, j 

And lights their inner homes ; j 
For them Thou fill'st with air the unbounded skies, 

And givest them the stores 

Of ocean, and the harvests of its shores. | 

Thy Spirit is around, j 

Quickening the restless mass that sweeps along ; j 

And this eternal sound, \ 

(Voices and footfalls of the numberless throng) j 

Like the resounding sea { 

Or like the rainy tempest, speaks of Thee. \ 

\ 

And when the hours of rest | 
Come, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine 

Hushing its billowy breast, i 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. lO/ 

The quiet of that moment too is Thine : 
It breathes of Him who keeps 
The vast and helpless City while it sleeps. 



TO THE NORTH STAR. 

The sad and solemn Night 

Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires : 

The glorious host of light 
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires ; 
All through her silent watches, gliding slow, 
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. 

Day too hath many a star 

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they : 

Through the blue fields afar, 
Unseen, they follow in his flaming way : 
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim, 
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him. 

And thou dost see them rise, 

Star of the Pole ! and thou dost see them set. 

Alone, in thy cold skies, 
Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet ; 
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train, 
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main. 

There, at morn's rosy birth, 

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air ; 

And eve, that round the earth 
Chases the day, beholds thee watching there ; 
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls 
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls. 

Alike beneath thine eye 

The deeds of darkness and of light are done : 

High tow'rds the star-lit sky 
Towns blaze ; the smoke of battle blots the sun ; 



I08 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. | 

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud ; j 

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud. : 

On thine unaltering blaze j 

The half-wreck'd mariner, his compass lost, ] 

Fixes his steady gaze, i 

And steers undoubting to the friendly coast ; ! 
And they who stray in perilous wastes by night 

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right, j 

And therefore bards of old, I 

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood. 

Did in thy beams behold ; 

A beauteous type of that Unchanging Good, 
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray j 

The voyager of Time should shape his heedful way. ; 

THE THIRD OF NOVEMBER. I 

1861. \ 

Softly breathes the West wind beside the ruddy forest, ^ 

Taking leaf by leaf from the branches where he flies ; 
Sweetly streams the sunshine this third day of November, i 
Through the golden haze of the quiet autumn skies. ; 

Tenderly the season has spared the grassy meadows, j 

Spared the petted flowers that the old world gave the new : j 
Spared the autumn rose and the garden's group of pansies. 
Late-blown dandelions and periwinkles blue. ! 

On my cornice linger the ripe black grapes ungather'd ; | 

Children fill the groves with the echoes of their glee, I 

Gathering tawny chestnuts, and shouting when beside them I 

Drops the heavy fruit of the tall black-walnut tree. ^ 

Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson. 

Yet our full- leaved willows are in their freshest green : j 

Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing J 

With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen. | 



THOMAS CARLYLE. IO9 

Like this kindly season may life's decline come o'er me ! 
Pass'd is manhood's summer, the frosty months are here : 
Yet be genial airs and a pleasant sunshine left me, 
Leaf and fruit and blossom, to mark the closing year ! 

Dreary is the time when the flowers of earth are wither'd ; 
Dreary is the time when the woodland leaves are cast, 
When upon the hillside, all harden'd into iron, 
Howling like a wolf flies the famish'd Northern blast. 

Dreary are the years when the eye can look no longer 
With delight on Nature or hope on human kind : 
O, may those that whiten my temples, as they pass me, 
Leave the heart unfrozen and spare the cheerful mind. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 

1795— 1881. 



ADIEU! 
Let Time and Chance combine, combine ! 
Let Time and Chance combine ! 
The fairest love from heaven above, 
That love of yours, was mine. 

My Dear ! 
That love of yours was mine. 

The Past is fled and gone, and gone : 

The Past is fled and gone : 

If nought but pain to me remain, 

I'll fare in memory on, 

My dear ! 

I'll fare in memory on. 

The saddest tears must fall, must fall : 

The saddest tears must fall : 

In weal or woe, in this world below, 

I love you ever and all, 

My Dear ! 

I love you ever and all. 



no JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. 

A long road full of pain, of pain : 

A long road full of pain : 

One soul, one heart, sworn ne'er to part, — 

We ne'er can meet again, 

My Dear I 

We ne'er can meet again. 

Hard fate will not allow, allow ; 

Hard fate will not allow : 

We blessed were as the angels are : — 

Adieu for ever now, 

My Dear ! 

Adieu for ever now ! 

JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. 
1794—1852. 



HOUR AFTER HOUR. 

Hour after hour departs, 

Recklessly flying ; 
The golden time of our hearts 

Is fast a-dying : 
O, how soon it will have faded ! 
Joy droops, with forehead shaded ; 

And Memory starts. 

When I am gone, O wear 
Sweet smiles ! thy dwelling 

Choose where flowers feed the air, 
And the sea is swelling ! 

And near where some rivulet lingers 

In the grass, like an infant's fingers 
In its mother's hair. 

Thy spirit should steep its wing 

In the dews of Nature ; 
And the living airs of Spring 



JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. Ill 

Should give each feature 
Of thy face a rich lustrous smiling, — 
Thy thoughts from that gloom beguiling 

Which cold hours bring. 

Farewell to our delights ! 

Love ! we are parted. 
Come with thy silvery nights, 

Autumn, gold-hearted ! 
Let our two hearts be wreathing 
Their hopes when the eve is breathing 

Through leaf-starr'd lights ! 

SONG. 
Go where the water glideth gently ever, 

Glideth by meadows that the greenest be ; 
Go, listen to our own beloved river : 
And think of me ! 

Wander in forests where the small flower layeth 

Its fairy gem beside the giant tree ; 
Listen the dim brook pining while it playeth : 
And think of me ! 

Watch when the sky is silver pale at even, 

And the wind grieveth in the lonely tree ; 
Go out beneath the solitary heaven : 
And think of me ! 

And when the moon riseth as she were dreaming. 
And treadeth with white feet the lulled sea. 
Go, silent as a star beneath her beaming. 
And think of me ! 

SHERWOOD FOREST. 
The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good. 
The grass beneath them now is dimly green : 
Are they deserted all ? Is no young mien, 



112 HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 

With loose-slung bugle, met within the wood ? 
No arrow found, foil'd of its antler'd food, 
Stuck in the oak's rude side ? Is there nought seen 
To mark the revelries which there have been, 
In the sweet days of merry Robin Hood ? 
Go there, with summer and with evening, go 
In the soft shadows, like some wandering man ! 
And thou shalt far amid the forest know 
The archer men in green, with belt and bow, 
Feasting on pheasant, river-fowl and swan, 
With Robin at their head, and Marian. 

HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 
1796 — 1849. 



SONG. 

She is not fair to outward view 

As many maidens be ; 
Her loveliness I never knew 

Until she smiled on me : 
O then I saw her eye was bright, 
A well of love, a spring of light. 

But now her looks are coy and cold, 

To mine they ne'er reply ; 
And yet I cease not to behold 

The love-light in her eye : 
Her very frowns are fairer far 
Than smiles of other maidens are. 

WHITHER ? 

Whither is gone the wisdom and the power 
That ancient sages scatter'd with the notes 
Of thought-suggesting lyres ? The music floats 
In the void air; even at this breathing hour, 
In every cell and every blooming bower 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. II3 

The sweetness of old lays is hovering still : 
But the strong soul, the self-sustaining will, 
The rugged root that bare the winsome flower, 
Is weak and wither'd. Were we like the Fays 
That sweetly nestle in the fox-glove bells, 
Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipp'd shells 
Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays, 
Then might our pretty modern Philomels 
Sustain our spirits with their roundelays. 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. 

1798—1835. 



JEANIE MORRISON. 

I've wander'd East, I've wander'd West, 

Through mony a weary way, 
But never, never can forget 

The luve of life's young day : 
The fire that's blawn on Beltane e'en 

May weel be black gin Yule ; 
But blacker fa' awaits the heart 

Where first fond luve grows cool. 

O dear dear Jeanie Morrison ! 

The thoughts o' bygane years 
Still fling their shadows o'er my path, 

And blind my een wi' tears : 
They blind my een wi' salt salt tears, 

And sair and sick ! pine, 
As memory idly summons up 

The blithe blinks o' langsyne. 

'Twas then we luvit ilk ither weel ; 

'Twas then we twa did part : 
Sweet time ! sad time ! twa bairns at scule, 

Twa bairns and but ae heart. 

II.— 8 



114 WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. ! 

1 
'Twas then we sat on ae laigh bink, i 

To leir ilk ither lear ; ' 

And tones and looks and smiles were shed, * 

Remember'd evermair. 

I wonder, Jeanie ! aften yet, 

When sitting on that bink, 
Cheek touchin' cheek, loof lock'd in loof, ' 

What our wee heads could think : 
When baith bent down o'er ae braid page, 

Wi' ae buik on our knee. 
Thy lips were on thy lesson, but 

My lesson was in thee. 

O, mind ye how we hung our heads, 

How cheeks brent red wi' shame. 

Whene'er the scule-weans laughin' said i 

We cleek'd thegither hame ? ' 

And mind ye o' the Saturdays j 

(The scule then skailt at noon) j 

When we ran aff to speel the braes, | 

The broomy braes o' June ? i 

\ 

My head rins round and round about, l 

My heart flows like a sea, ' 
As ane by ane the thoughts rush back 

O scule-time and o' thee : 
O mornin' life ! O mornin' luve ! 

O lightsome days and lang, 

When hinnied hopes around our hearts ' 

Like simmer blossoms sprang I 

i 

O mind ye, Luve ! how aft we left 'i 

The deavin' dinsome toun, ] 
To wander by the green burnside. 

And hear its waters croon ? , 

The simmer leaves hung o'er our heads, < 

The flowers burst round our feet, ; 



WILLIAM MOTHERWELL. II5 

And in the gloamin' o' the wood 
The throssil whusslit sweet. 

The throssil whussHt in the wood, 

The burn sang to the trees, 
And we, with Nature's heart in tune, 

Concerted harmonies ; 
And on the knowe, abune the burn, 

For hours thegither sat. 
In the silentness o' joy, till baith 

Wi' very gladness grat. 

Ay ! ay ! dear Jeanie Morrison ! 

Tears trickled down your cheek. 
Like dewbeads on a rose, yet nane 

Had ony power to speak. 
That was a time, a blessed time, 

When hearts were fresh and young, 
When freely gush'd all feelings forth, 

Unsyllabled, unsung. 

I marvel, Jeanie Morrison ! 

Gin I hae been to thee 
As closely twined wi' earliest thoughts 

As ye hae been to me. 
O tell me gin their music fills 

Thine ear as it does mine ! 
O say gin e'er your heart grows grit 

Wi' dreamings o' lang syne ! 

I've wander'd East, I've wander'd West, 

I've borne a weary lot : 
But in my wanderings, far or near. 

Ye never were forgot. 
The fount that first burst frae this heart 

Still travels on its way. 
And channels deeper, as it rins, 

The luve 0' life's young day. 



Il6 THOMAS HOOD. 

O dear dear Jeanie Morrison ! 

Since we were sinder'd young 
I've never seen your face nor heard 

The music o' your tongue : 
But I could hug all wretchedness, 

And happy could I dee, 
Did I but ken your heart still dream'd 

C bygane days and me. 



THOMAS HOOD. 

1799—1845. 



THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS. 

One more Unfortunate 
Weary of breath. 
Rashly importunate, 
Gone to her death ! 

Take her up tenderly ! 
Lift her with care ! 
Fashion'd so slenderly, 
Young, and so fair ! 

Look at her garments 
Clinging like cerements, 
Whilst the wave constantly 
Drips from her clothing ! 
Take her up instantly ! 
Loving, not loathing. 

Touch her not scornfully ! 
Think of her mournfully, 
Gently, and humanly ! 
Not of the stains of her ! 
All that remains of her 
Now is pure womanly. 



THOMAS HOOD. 11/ 

Make no deep scrutiny 
Into her mutiny 
Rash and undutiful ! 
Past all dishonour, 
Death has left on her 
Only the Beautiful. 

Still, for all slips of hers, 
One of Eve's family, — 
Wipe those poor lips of hers 
Oozing so clammily ! 

Loop up her tresses, 
Escaped from the comb ! 
Her fair auburn tresses : 
Whilst wonderment guesses — 
Where was her home ? 

Who was her father ? 

Who was her mother ? 

Had she a sister ? 

Had she a brother ? 

Or was there a dearer One 

Still, and a nearer One 

Yet than all other ? 

Alas for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the sun ! 
O, it was pitiful ! 
Near a whole city full 
Home she had none. 

Sisterly, brotherly. 
Fatherly, motherly, 
Feelings had changed ; 
Love by harsh evidence 
Thrown from its eminence ; 






Il8 THOMAS HOOD. ' 

Even God's providence 
Seeming estranged. 

Where the lamps quiver 

So far in the river, 

With many a light ' 

From window and casement, j 

From garret to basement, - 

She stood, with amazement, j 

Houseless by night. { 

The bleak wind of March 

Made her tremble and shiver ; ] 

But not the dark arch 5 

Or the black flowing river : i 

Mad from life's history, 

Glad to death's mystery 

Swift to be hurl'd, — 

Any where, any where 

Out of the world ! ; 

In she plunged boldly, 
No matter how coldly 
The rough river ran. — 
Over the brink of it. 
Picture it, think of it, 
Dissolute Man ! 
Lave in it, drink of it. 



Then, if you can 



» 1 



Take her up tenderly, 
Lift her with care ! 
Fashion'd so slenderly. 
Young, and so fair ! 

Ere her limbs frigidly 
Stiffen too rigidly, 
Decently, kindly. 
Smooth and compose them ! 



THOMAS HOOD. II9 

And her eyes, close them 
Staring so blindly ! 

Dreadfully staring 
Through muddy impurity, 
As when with the daring 
Last look of despairing 
Fix'd on futurity. 

Perishing gloomily, — 
Spurr'd by contumely. 
Cold inhumanity. 
Burning insanity, 
Into her rest. 

— Cross her hands humbly ! 
As if praying dumbly, 
Over her breast, — 

Owning her weakness. 
Her evil behaviour : 
And leaving, with meekness, 
Her sins to her Saviour. 



ODE TO AUTUMN. 

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn 
Stand shadowless, like Silence listening 
To silence (for no lonely bird would sing 
Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn. 
Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn). 
Shaking his languid locks all dewy bright 
With tangled gossamer that fell by night, 
Pearling his coronet of golden corn. 

Where are the songs of Summer ? With the Sun, 

Oping the dusky eyelids of the South, 

Till shade and silence waken up as one, 

And Morning sings with a warm odorous mouth. 



I20 THOMAS HOOD. 

Where are the merry birds ? Away, away 
On panting wings through the inclement skies, 

Lest owls should prey 

Undazzled at noon-day. 
And tear with horny beak their lustrous eyes. 

Where are the blooms of Summer ? In the West, 
Blushing their last to the last sunny hours. 
When the mild Eve by sudden Night is press'd. 
Like tearful Proserpine snatch'd from her flowers, 

To a most gloomy breast. 
Where is the pride of Summer, the green prime, 
The many many leaves all twinkling ? Three 
On the moss'd elm, three on the naked lime 
Trembling, and one upon the old oak tree. 
Where is the Dryads' immortality ? 
Gone into mournful cypress and dark yew. 
Or wearing the long gloomy winter through 
In the smooth holly's green eternity. 

The squirrel gloats on his accomplish'd hoard ; 

The ants have brimm'd their garners with ripe grain ; 

And honey-bees have stored 
The sweets of summer in their luscious cells ; 
The swallows all have wing'd across the main ; 
But here the autumn Melancholy dwells, 

And sighs her tearful spells 
Amongst the sunless shadows of the plain. 

Alone, alone. 

Upon a mossy stone 
She sits and reckons up the Dead and Gone, 
With the last leaves for a love-rosary : 
Whilst all the wither'd world looks drearily, 
Like a dim picture of the drowned Past 
In the hush'd mind's mysterious far-away. 
Doubtful what ghostly thing will steal the last 
Into that distance, grey upon the grey. 



THOMAS HOOD. 121 

O, go and sit with her, and be o'ershaded I 

Under the languid downfall of her hair ! '] 

She wears a coronal of flowers faded J 

Upon her forehead, and a face of care ; — j 

There is enough of wither'd everywhere j 
To make her bower, and enough of gloom ; 

There is enough of sadness to invite, ] 
If only for the rose that died, whose doom 

Is Beauty's, — she that with the living bloom i 

Of conscious cheeks most beautifies the light ; — : 

There is enough of sorrowing, and quite i 

Enough of bitter fruits the earth doth bear, \ 

Enough of chilly droppings from her bowl ; \ 

Enough of fear and shadowy despair i 

To frame her cloudy prison for the soul. ■ 

TO A COLD BEAUTY. 

Lady ! wouldst thou heiress be 

To Winter's cold and cruel part ? 

When he sets the rivers free, : 

Thou dost still lock up thy heart : i 

Thou that shouldst outlast the snow I 

But in the whiteness of thy brow. j 



Scorn and cold neglect are made 
For winter gloom and winter wind ; 

But thou wilt wrong the summer air 
Breathing it to words unkind, — 

Breath which only should belong 

To love, to sunlight, and to song. 

When the little buds unclose. 

Red, and white, and pied, and blue. 

And that virgin flower, the rose, 
Opes her heart to hold the dew. 

Wilt thou lock thy bosom up 

With no jewel in its cup ? 



122 THOMAS HOOD. 

Let not cold December sit 

Thus in Love's peculiar throne ! 
Brooklets are not prison'd now, 

But crystal frosts are all agone ; 
And that which hangs upon the spray, 
It is no snow, but flower of May. 



LOVE'S CONSTANCY. 

Still glides the gentle streamlet on. 

With shifting current new and strange ; 

The water that was here is gone : 

But those green shadows do not change. 

Serene, or ruffled by the storm. 
On present waves, as on the past. 

The mirror'd grove retains its form, 

The self-same trees their semblance cast. 

The hue each fleeting globule wears, 
That drop bequeaths it to the next : 

One picture still the surface bears 
To illustrate the murmur'd text. 

So, Love ! however time may flow. 
Fresh hours pursuing those that flee, 

One constant image still shall show 
My tide of life is true to thee. 



RUTH. 

She stood breast high amid the corn, 
Clasp'd by the golden light of morn. 
Like the sweetheart of the Sun, 
Who many a glowing kiss had won. 

On her cheek an autumn flush 
Deeply ripen'd : such a blush 



THOMAS HOOD. 123 

In the midst of brown was born, 
Like red poppies grown with corn. 

Round her eyes her tresses fell, — 
Which were blackest none could tell : 
But long lashes veil'd a light 
That had else been all too bright. 

And her hat with shady brim 
Made her tressy forehead dim : 
Thus she stood amid the stooks. 
Praising God with sweetest looks. 

Sure, I said, heaven did not mean 
Where I reap thou shouldst but glean : 
Lay thy sheaf adown, and come ! 
Share my harvest and my home ! 

THE TIME OF ROSES. 

It was not in the winter 

Our loving lot was cast : 
It was the Time of Roses, — 

We pluck'd them as we pass'd. 

That churlish season never frown'd 

On early lovers yet : 
O no ! the world was newly crown'd 

With flowers when first we met. 

'Twas twilight, and I bade you go; 

But still you held me fast : 
It was the Time of Roses, — 

We pluck'd them as we pass'd. 

What else could peer thy glowing cheek. 

That tears began to stud ? 
And when I ask'd the like of Love, 

You snatch'd a damask bud, 



124 CHARLES WELLS. 

And oped it to the dainty core, 

Still glowing to the last. 
It was the Time of Roses : 

We pluck'd them as we pass'd. 

CHARLES WELLS. 
1800 — 1879. 



SONG. 

Kiss no more the Vintages, 

Thou hot-lipp'd Sun ! 
Flow no more the merry wine 

From the dark tun ! 

Above my bed hang dull nightshade. 
And o'er my brows the willow ! 

With maiden flowers from dewy bowers 
Cover my last pillow ! 

Away ! away to the green sward ! 

My young heart breaks : 
Break the earth, and lay me deep ! 

Love my breath takes. 

Angels ! pity, and hear this ditty 
Breathed from a poor girl's lips : 

O'er her lover ever hover, 
Scattering earthly bliss ! 

Come, thou iron-crowned Death ! 

Into my stretched arms, 
Bridegroom to my maiden breast ; 

End my sad alarms ! 

Lead on, lead on, thou Love of Bone ! 

Over the heath wild ; 
And 'neath the grass secure fast 

Thy melancholy child ! 



WILLIAM BARNES. 12$ 

SIR HENRY TAYLOR. 

I8CX3 



SONG. 
The morning broke, and Spring was there, 

And lusty Summer near her birth ; 
The birds awoke and waked the air. 

The flowers awoke and waked the earth. 

*' Up ! " quoth he : '' what joy for me. 
On dewy plain, in budding brake ! 
A sweet bird sings on every tree. 

And flowers are sweeter, for my sake." 

Lightly o'er the plain he stepp'd. 

Lightly brush'd he through the wood, 

And snared a little bird that slept 

And had not waken'd when she should. 

Lightly through the wood he brush'd 
Lightly stepp'd he o'er the plain : 

And yet — a little flower was crush'd 
That never raised its head again. 

WILLIAM BARNES. 
1801— 



NOT FAR TO GO. 

As upland fields were sun-burn'd brown, 
And heat-dried brooks were running small, 
And sheep were gather'd, panting all, 

Below the hawthorn on the down, — 

The while my mare, with dipping head, 
Pull'd on my cart, above the bridge, — 
I saw come on, beside the ridge, 

A maiden white in skin and thread, 

And walking, with an elbow load, 

The way I drove along myiroad. 



126 WILLIAM BARNES. ] 

As there with comely steps up-hill ,: 

She rose, by elm trees all in ranks, j 

From shade to shade, by flowery banks '\ 

Where flew the bird with whistling bill, — > 

I kindly said — " Now won't you ride, ; 
This burning weather, up the knap ? 
I have a seat that fits the trap. 
And now is swung from side to side." 

*' O no ! " she cried, — " I thank you, no ! . 

I've little further now to go." { 

i 

Then, up the timber'd slope, I found I 

The prettiest house a good day's ride j 

Would bring you by, with porch and side I 

By rose and jessamine well bound ; i 

And near at hand a spring and pool, j 

With lawn well-sunn'd and bower cool : j 

And, while the wicket fell behind ' 

Her steps, I thought— If I would find j 

A wife I need not blush to show I 

I've little further now to go. j 



MV FORE-ELDERS. 

When from the child, that still is led 
By hand, a father's hand is gone, — 
Or when a few-year'd mother dead 

Has left her children growing on, — 
When men have left their children staid, 
And they again have boy and maid, — 
O, can they know, as years may roll, 
Their children's children, soul by soul ? 
If this with souls in heaven can be, 
Do my fore-elders know of me ? 

My elders' elders, man and wife, 
Were borne full early to the tomb, 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 12/ 

With children still in childhood life 
To play with butterfly or bloom. 
And did they see the seasons mould 
Their faces on, from young to old, 
As years might bring them, turn by turn, 
A time to laugh or time to mourn ? 
If this with souls in heaven can be, 
Do my fore-elders know of me ? 

How fain I now would walk the floor 

Within their mossy porch's bow, 
Or linger by their church's door, 

Or road that bore them to and fro. 
Or nook where once they built their mow, 
Or gateway open to their plough 
(Though now indeed no gate is swung 
That their live hands had ever hung), — 
If I could know that they would see 
Their child's late child, and know of me. 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 
1801— 



THE ELEMENTS. 

[A tragic chorus.) 

Man is permitted much I 

To scan and learn I 

I 
In Nature's frame : 

Till he well-nigh can tame 

Brute mischiefs, and can touch 

Invisible things, and turn 
All warring ills to purposes of good. 

Thus, as a God below, ij 

He can controul |i 

And harmonize what seems amiss to flow \ 

As sever'd from the whole 

And dimly understood. 



128 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 



But o'er the elements i 

One Hand alone, \ 

One Hand has sway. j 

What influence day by day i 

In straiter belt prevents 

The impious Ocean, thrown 
Alternate o'er the ever-sounding shore ? 

Or who has eye to trace I 

How the Plague came ? j 

Forerun the doublings of the Tempest's race ? 

Or the Air's weight and flame J 

On a set scale explore ! 

Thus God has will'd : 
That man, when fully skill'd, 
Still gropes in twilight dim ; 

Encompass'd all his hours j 

By fearfullest powers | 

Inflexible to him : ' 

That so he may discern 

His feebleness, 
And even for earth's success 
To Him in wisdom turn 
Who holds for us the keys of either home — 
Earth and the world-to-come. 

A VOICE FROM AFAR. 

Weep not for me ! 
Be blithe as wont, nor tinge with gloom 

The stream of love that circles home, : 

Light hearts and free ! \ 

Joy in the gifts Heaven's bounty lends ; j 

Nor miss my face, dear friends! | 

I still am near : 
Watching the smiles I prized on earth, j 

Your converse mild, your blameless mirth ; ! 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 1 29 

Now too I hear 
Of whisper'd sounds the tale complete, 
Low prayers, and musings sweet. 

A sea before 
The Throne is spread : its pure still glass 
Pictures all earth- scenes as they pass ; 

We on its shore 
Share, in the bosom of our rest, 
God's knowledge, and are bless'd. 



HARRIET MARTINEAU. 

1802 — 1876. 



BENEATH THE ARCH. 

Beneath this starry arch 

Nought resteth or is still ; 
But all things hold their march 
As if by one great Will : 
Moves one, move all : hark to the foot-fall ! 
On, on, forever ! 

Yon sheaves were once but seed ; 

Will ripens into deed ; 

As cave-drops swell the streams, 

Day-thoughts feed nightly dreams ; 

And sorrow tracketh wrong. 

As echo follows song : 

On, on, forever ! 

By night, like stars on high. 

The Hours reveal their train ; 
They whisper, and go by : 
I never watch in vain. 
Moves one, move all : hark to the foot-fall ! 
On, on, forever ! 
II. -9 



I30 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. 

They pass the cradle -head, 
And there a promise shed ; 
They pass the moist new grave, 
And bid rank verdure wave ; 
They bear through every clime 
The harvests of all time 

On, on, forever! 

THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. 

1803 — 1849. 



SONG OF THE STYGIAN NAIADS. 

Prosperine may pull her flowers. 
Wet with dew or wet with tears. 
Red with anger, pale with fears : 
Is it any fault of ours 
If Pluto be an amorous king. 

And comes home nightly laden, 
Underneath his broad bat-wing. 
With a gentle mortal maiden ? 
Is it so ? Wind ! is it so ? 
All that you and I do know 
Is that we saw fly and fix 
'Mongst the reeds and flowers of Styx, 

Yesterday, 
Where the Furies made their hay 
For a bed of tiger-cubs, 
A great fly of Beelzebub's, — 
The bee of hearts, which mortals name 
Cupid, Love, and Fie-for-shame. 

Proserpine may weep in rage. 
But, ere I and you have done 
Kissing, bathing in the sun, 
What I have in yonder cage. 
Bird or serpent, wild or tame, 
She shall guess and ask in vain : 



THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES. 131 

But if Pluto does it again, 
It shall sing out loud his shame. 
What hast caught then ? what hast caught ? 
Nothing but a poet's thought 

Which so light did fall and fix 
'Mongst the reeds and flowers of Styx 

Yesterday, 
Where the Furies made their hay 
For a bed of tiger-cubs, 
A great fly of Beelzebub's, — 
The bee of hearts, which mortals name 
Cupid, Love, and Fie-for-shame. 

BO IV MANY TIMES? 

How many times do I love thee ? Dear ! 
Tell me how many thoughts there be 

In the atmosphere 

Of a new-fallen year. 
Whose white and sable hours appear 
The latest flake of Eternity : — 
So many times do I love thee. Dear ! 

How many times do I love, again ? 
Tell me how many beads there are 

In a silver chain 

Of evening rain 
Unraveled from the trembling main 
And threading the eye of a yellow star : — 
So many times do I love again. 

SEA SONG. 

To sea ! to sea! The calm is o*er : 

The wanton water leaps in sport. 
And rattles down the pebbly shore ; 

The dolphin wheels, the sea-cows snort. 
And unseen mermaids' pearly song 
Comes bubbling up the weeds among. 



132 RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. 

Fling broad the sail ! dip deep the oar ! 
To sea ! to sea ! the calm is o'er. 

To sea ! to sea ! our wide-wing'd bark 
Shall billowy cleave its sunny way, 

And with its shadow, fleet and dark. 
Break the caved Tritons' azure day : 

Like mighty eagles soaring light 

O'er antelopes on Alpine height. 

The anchor heaves, the ship swings free, 

The sail swells full : to sea ! to sea ! 

RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. 

1803— 



GENIUS. ! 

Far out at sea, — the sun was high, j 

"While veer'd the wind and flapp'd the sail, j 

"We saw a snow-white butterfly ; 

Dancing before the fitful gale, j 
Far out at sea. 

The little wanderer, who had lost | 

His way, of danger nothing knew ; j 

Settled awhile upon the mast, — i 

Then flutter'd o'er the waters blue, ' 

Far out at sea. ; 

Above, there gleam'd the boundless sky ; 1 

Beneath, the boundless ocean sheen ; | 

Between them danced the butterfly, • 

The spirit-life of this vast scene, — j 

Far out at sea, ■ 

I 

The tiny soul then soar'd away, i 

Seeking the clouds on fragile wings, '; 
Lured by the brighter, purer ray 
Which hope's ecstatic morning brings, — 

Far out at sea. \ 



RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. 1 33 

Away he sped with shimmering glee, 
Scarce seen, now lost, yet onward borne ! 
Night comes, wdth wind and rain, and he 
No more will dance before the Morn, 
Far out at sea. 

He dies, unlike his mates, I ween. 
Perhaps not sooner or worse cross'd ; 
And he hath felt, thought, known, and seen 
A larger life and hope — though lost 
Far out at sea. 

THE LAUREL-SEED. 

Marmora Ji7tdit. 
I. 

A despot gazed on sun-set clouds, 

Then sank to sleep amidst the gleam ; — 

Forthwith, a myriad starving slaves 
Must realize his lofty dream. 

Year upon year, all night and day, 

They toil'd, they died — and were replaced ; 

At length a marble fabric rose. 

With cloud-like domes and turrets graced. 

No anguish of those herds of slaves 
E'er shook one dome or wall asunder, 

Nor wars of other mighty Kings, 
Nor lustrous javelins of the thunder. 

II. 

One sunny morn a lonely bird 

Pass'd o'er, and dropt a laurel-seed ; 
The plant sprang up amidst the walls 

Whose chinks were full of moss and weed. 

The laurel tree grew large and strong. 
Its roots went searching deeply down ; 



134 RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. 

It split the marble walls of Wrong, 
And blossom'd o'er the Despot's crown. 

And m its boughs a nightingale 

Sings to those world-forgotten graves ; 

And o'er its head a skylark's voice 
Consoles the spirits of the slaves. 

SOLITUDE AND THE LILY, 

THE LILY. 

I bend above the moving stream, 
And see myself in my own dream, — 

Heaven passing, while I do not pass. 
Something divine pertains to me, 
Or I to it : reality 

Escapes me on this liquid glass. 

SOLITUDE. 
The changeful clouds that float or poise on high 
Emblem earth's night and day of history : 
Renew'd for ever, evermore to die. 
Thy life-dream is thy fleeting loveliness ; 
But mine is concentrated consciousness, 
A life apart from pleasure or distress. 

The grandeur of the Whole 

Absorbs my soul. 
While my caves sigh o'er human littleness. 

THE LILY. 

Ah, Solitude ! 
Of marble Silence fit abode, — 
I do prefer my fading face, 
My loss of loveliness and grace. 

With cloud-dreams ever in my view; 
Also the hope that other eyes 
May share my rapture in the skies 
And, if illusion, feel it true. 



RICHARD HENGIST HORNE. 135 



THE PLOUGH. 

Above yon sombre swell of land 

Thou seest the dawn's grave orange hue, 

With one pale streak like yellow sand, 
And over that a vein of blue. 

The air is cold above the woods ; 

All silent is the earth and sky, 
Except with his own lonely moods 

The blackbird holds a colloquy. 

Over the broad hill creeps a beam. 

Like hope that gilds a good man's brow ; 

And now ascends the nostril-steam 
Of stalwart horses come to plough. 

Ye rigid Ploughmen ! bear in mind 

Your labor is for future hours. 
Advance ! spare not ! nor look behind ! 

Plough deep and straight with all your powers ! 



DIRGE. t 

On me, on me [ 



Time and Change can heap no more ! 
The painful past with blighting grief 
Hath left my heart a wither'd leaf : 
Time and Change can do no more. 

Earth's barbed woes 

Poised on the breath of Fate's dull roar ! 
Ye move me not, nor breed one fear ; 
I wait your coming, and can bear : 
Time and Change can do no more. 



136 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

NEWTON. 

The Earth was but a platform for thy power, 
Whereon to watch and work, by day and night ; 
The Moon to thee was but heaven's evening flower; 
The Sun a loftier argument of light ; 
Each Planet was thy fellow traveler bright, 
In vision, — and, in thought, still nearer home : 
Throughout the Universe thy soul took flight, 
And touch'd at suns whose rays may never come. 
Though star-tranced Tycho and the thought sublime 
Of Kepler fathom'd Heaven's infinity, 
To thee 'twas left to prove the laws that chime 
Through spheres and atoms, — being, and to be : 
Profound alike in thy humility, — 
" A child that gather'd shells, kneeling beside the sea." 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

1803— 1882. 



THE PROBLEM. 

I like a church, I like a cowl, 
I love a prophet of the soul ; 
And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles : 
Yet not for all his faith can see 
Would I that cowled churchman be. 1 

j 
Why should the vest on him allure j 

Which I could not on me endure? 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 1 

His awful Jove young Phidias brought ; 

Never from lips of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle ; 

Out from the heart of Nature roll'd : 

The burdens of the Bible old : 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. I37 

The litanies of nations came, 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below, — 
The canticles of love and woe ; 
The hand that rounded Peter's dome 
And groin'd the aisles of Christian Rome 
Wrought in a sad sincerity : 
Himself from God he could not free ; 
He builded better than he knew : 
The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest 

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast ? 

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, 

Painting with morn each annual cell ? 

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds 

To her old leaves new myriads ? 

Such and so grew these holy piles. 

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 

As the best gem upon her zone ; 

And Morning opes with haste her lids, 

To gaze upon the Pyramids ; 

O'er England's Abbeys bends the sky, 

As on its friends, with kindred eye : 

For out of Thought's interior sphere 

These wonders rose to upper air ; 

And Nature gladly gave them place, 

Adopted them into her race. 

And granted them an equal date 

With Andes and with Ararat. 

These temples grew, as grows the grass : 

Art might obey, but not surpass. 

The passive Master lent his hand 

To the vast Soul that o'er him plann'd ; 

And the same Power that rear'd the shrine 



138 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 



Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 
Ever the fiery Pentecost \ 

Girds with one flame the countless host, j 

Trances the heart through chanting choirs, j 

And through the priest the mind inspires. j 



The Word unto the prophet spoken 
Was writ on tablets yet unbroken ; 
The Word by seers or sybils told, 
In groves of oak or fanes of gold, 
Still floats upon the morning wind, 
Still whispers to the willing mind. 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 
I know what say the Fathers wise : 
The Book itself before me lies, 
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 
And he who blent both in his line. 
The younger Golden-Lips (or Mines) — 
Taylor, the Shakespeare of Divines. 
His words are music in my ear; 
I see his cowled portrait dear : 
And yet, for all his faith could see, 
I would not the good bishop be. 



rO THE HUMBLE-BEE. 

Burly, dozing Humble-Bee ! 
Where thou art is clime for me. 
Let them sail for Porto Rique, 
Far off" heats through seas to seek ! 
I will follow thee alone, 
Thou animated Torrid Zone ! 
Zigzag steerer ! desert cheerer ! 
Let me chase thy waving lines ; 
Keep me nearer, me thy hearer. 
Singing over shrubs and vines ! 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 1 39 

Insect lover of the sun ! 

Joy of thy dominion ! 

Sailor of the atmosphere ! 

Swimmer through the waves of air ! 

Voyager of light and noon ! 

Epicurean of June ! 

Wait, I prithee, till I come 

Within earshot of thy hum ! 

All without is martyrdom. 

When the South wind, in May days, 
With a net of shining haze 
Silvers the horizon wall. 
And, with softness touching all, 
Tints the human countenance 
With a colour of romance, — 
And, infusing subtle heats, 
Turns the sod to violets, — 
Thou in sunny solitudes. 
Rover of the underwoods ! 
The green silence dost displace 
With thy mellow breezy bass. 

Hot Midsummer's petted crone ! 
Sweet to me thy drowsy tone. 
Tells of countless sunny hours. 
Long days, and solid banks of flowers ; 
Of gulfs of sweetness without bound 
In Indian wildernesses found ; 
Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure, 
Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure. 

Aught unsavory or unclean 

Hath my Insect never seen ; 

But violets and bilberry bells, 

Maple sap, and daffodels, 

Grass with green flag half-mast high, 



I40 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

Succory to match the sky, 
Columbine with horn of honey, 
Scented fern, and agrimony, 
Clover, catch-fly, adder's tongue. 
And briaLr roses dwelt among. 
All beside was unknown waste 1 
All was picture as he pass'd. 

Wiser far than human seer, 
Yellow-breech'd philosopher ! 
Seeing only what is fair, 
Sipping only what is sweet. 
Thou dost mock at Fate and Care, 
Leave the chaff and take the wheat. 
When the fierce North- Western blast 
Cools sea and land so far and fast. 
Thou already slumberest deep. 
Woe and want thou canst outsleep ; 
Want and woe, which torture us, 
Thy sleep makes ridiculous. 



TO EVA. 

O fair and stately Maid ! whose eyes 
Were kindled in the upper skies 
At the same torch that lighted mine, — 
For so I must interpret still 
Thy sweet dominion o'er my will, 
A sympathy divine : 

Ah ! let me blameless gaze upon 

Features that seem in heart my own ; 

Nor fear those watchful sentinels 

Which charm the more their glance forbids, — 

Chaste-glowing underneath their lids 

With fire that draws while it repels. 



GERALD GRIFFIN. 141 



THE APOLOGY. ^ \ 

Think me not unkind and rude j 

That I walk alone in grove and glen ! | 

I go to the God of the Wood, ; 

To fetch his word to men. 1 

i 
Tax not my sloth that I ' 

Fold my arms beside the brook ! 1 

Each cloud that floateth in the sky 

Writes a letter in my book. 

Chide me not, laborious band ! 

For the idle flowers I brought : ^ 

Every aster in my hand 1 

Goes home loaded with a thought. i 

There was never mystery 

But 'tis figured in the flowers ; 
Was never secret history 

But birds tell it in the bowers. ! 

One harvest from thy field 

Homeward brought the oxen strong : I 

A second crop thine acres yield, \ 

Which I gather in a song. . ] 



GERALD GRIFFIN. 
1803 — 1840. 



I!Sr THY MEMORY. 

A place in thy memory, Dearest! 

Is all that I claim : 
To pause and look back when thou hearest 

The sound of my name. 
Another may woo thee, nearer; 



142 GERALD GRIFFIN. 

Another may win and wear : 
I care not though he be dearer, 
If I am remember'd there. 

Remember me, not as a lover 

Whose hope was cross'd, 
Whose bosom can never recover 

The hght it hath lost ! 
As the young bride remembers the mother 

She loves, though she never may see, 
As a sister remembers a brother, 

O Dearest ! remember me ! 

Could I be thy true lover, Dearest ! 

Couldst thou smile on me, 
I would be the fondest and nearest 

That ever loved thee : 
But a cloud on my pathway is glooming 

That never must burst upon thine ; 
And heaven, that made thee all blooming, 

Ne'er made thee to wither on mine. 

Remember me then ! O remember 

My calm light love ! 
Though bleak as the blasts of November 

My life may prove. 
That life will, though lonely, be sweet 

If its brightest enjoyment should be 
A smile and kind word when we meet 

And a place in thy memory. 



MAIDEN E YES. 



You never bade me hope, 'tis true; 

I ask'd you not to swear : 
But I look'd in those eyes of blue, 

And read a promise there. 



JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 143 

The vow should bind, with maiden sighs 

That maiden Hps have spoken : 
But that which looks from maiden eyes 

Should last of all be broken. 

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. 
1803 — 1849. 



SOUL AND COUNTRY. 

Arise, my slumbering soul ! arise ! 
And learn what yet remains for thee 

To dree or do : 
The signs are flaming in the skies ; 
A struggling world would yet be free, , 

And live anew. ^ 

The earthquake hath not yet been born 
That soon shall rock the lands around, \ 

Beneath their base ; ] 

Immortal Freedom's thunder horn 
As yet yields but a doleful sound < 

To Europe's race. i 

Look round, my soul ! and see, and say 

If those about thee understand | 

Their mission here : j 

The will to smite, the power to slay, I 

Abound in every heart and hand \ 

Afar, anear ; ] 

But, God ! must yet the conqueror's sword j 
Pierce mind, as heart, in this proud year ? 

O, dream it not ! 

It sounds a false, blaspheming word, j 
Begot and born of moral fear, 

And ill-begot. I 

To leave the world a name is nought : j 

To leave a name for fjlorious deeds ■ 



144 SAMUEL LAMAN BLANCHARD.: 

And works of love, j 

A name to waken lightning thought \ 

And fire the soul of him who reads, ] 

This tells above. 
Napoleon sinks to-day before ' 

The ungilded shrine, the single soul ) 

Of Washington : 
Truth's name alone shall man adore I 

Long as the waves of Time shall roll 

Henceforward on ! 

My countrymen ! my words are weak : 

My health is gone, my soul is dark, i 

My heart is chill ; 
Yet would I fain and fondly seek ' 

To see you borne in freedom's bark ) 

O'er ocean still. 
Beseech your God ! and bide your hour ! ] 

He can not, will not long be dumb : j 

Even now his tread ; 

Is heard o'er earth with coming power ; j 

And coming (trust me !) it will come, — 

Else were He dead. 



SAMUEL LAMAN BLANCHARD. 

1803— 1845. 



JVELL G WYNNE'S L O OKING- GLASS. 

Glass antique ! 'twixt thee and Nell | 

Draw we here a parallel ! j 

She like thee was forced to bear | 

All reflections, foul or fair. | 

Thou art deep and bright within, — ' 

Depths as bright belong'd to Gwynne ; I 

Thou art very frail as well, : 

Frail as flesh is, — so was Nell. 



SAMUEL LAMAN BLANCHARD. 145 

Thou, her glass, art silver-lined, — 
She too had a silver mind ; 
Thine is fresh to this far day, — 
Hers till death ne'er wore away : 

Thou dost to thy surface win 

Wandering glances, — so did Gwynne ; 

Eyes on thee long love to dwell, — 

So men's eyes would do on Nell. 



Such the forms the Actress wrought ; ; 

Truth unfailing rests in you, — \ 

Nell, whate'er she was, was true : i 

Clear as virtue, dull as sin, ' 

Thou art oft, — as oft was Gwynne ; 

Breathe on thee, and drops will swell, — • 

Bright tears dimm'd the eyes of Nell. j 

1 

Thine's a frame to charm the sight, — ■ 

Framed was she to give delight ; j 

Waxen forms here, truly, show . 

Charles above and Nell below ; 

(But between them, chin with chin, ' 

Stuart stands as low as Gwynne), \ 

Pair'd yet parted, — mean'd to tell 

Charles was opposite to Nell. i 

Round the glass, wherein her face : 

Smiled so oft, her Arms we trace : '! 
Thou, her mirror, hast the pair — 
Lion here and leopard there. 

She had part in these : akin '. 

To the lion-heart was Gwynne ; j 

And the leopard's beauty fell, ; 

With its spots, to bounding Nell. | 

Oft inspected, ne'er seen through, '] 

Thou art firm, if brittle too : j 

II.— 10 i 



14^ ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER. 

So her will, on good intent, 
Might be broken, never bent. 

What the glass was when therein 

Beam'd the face of glad Nell Gwynne 

Was that face by beauty's spell 

To the honest soul of Nell. 

ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER. 
1804— 1875. 



ISHA CHERIOTH. 

They say his sin was dark and deep, 

Men shudder at his name ; 
They spurn at me because I weep, 

They call my sorrow shame. 

I know not ! I remember well 

Our city's native street. 
The path, the olive trees, the dell 

Where Cherioth's daughters meet : 

And there, where clustering vineyards rest 

And palms look forth above. 
He kindled in my maiden breast 

The glory of his love. 

He left me, — but with holier thought. 

Bound for a mightier scene : 
In proud Capernaum's path he sought 

The noble Nazarene. 

They tell of treachery, bought and sold 
(Perchance their words be truth) : 

I only see the scenes of old ; 
I hear his voice in youth. 

And I will sit, as Rizpah sate. 
Where life and hope are fled : 



ROBERT STEPHEN HAWKER. 14/ 

I sought him not in happier state, — 
I will not leave my Dead. 

No ! I must weep, though all around 

Be hatred and despair : 
One sigh shall soothe this fatal ground, — 

A Cherioth maiden's prayer. 

THE WAIL OF THE CORNISH MOTHER. 

They say 'tis a sin to sorrow, 

That what God doth is best : 
But 'tis only a month to-morrow 

I buried it from my breast. 

I know it should be a pleasure 

Your child to God to send : 
But mine was a precious treasure 

To me and to my poor friend. 

I thought it would call me Mother, 

The very first words it said : 
O, I never can love another 

Like the blessed babe that's dead. 

Well ! God is its own dear Father ; 

It was carried to church, and bless'd ; 
And our Saviour's arms will gather 

Such children to their rest. 

I will make my best endeavour 

That my sins may be forgiven ; 
I will serve God more than ever : 

To meet my child in heaven. 



For what God doth is best — 
But O, 'tis a month to-morrow 
I buried it from mv breast ! 



148 SIR WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON. 

SARAH FLOWER ADAMS. 

1805— 1849. 



THE OLIVE BOUGHS. 

They bear the hero from the fight, dying ; i 

But the foe is flying : 1 

They lay him down beneath the shade | 

By the ohve branches made : \ 

The oUve boughs are sighing. 

He hears the wind among the leaves, dying ; 

But the foe is flying : 
He hears the voice that used to be 
When he sat beneath the tree : 

The olive boughs are sighing. 

Comes the mist around his brow, dying ; 

But the foe is flying : 
Comes that form of peace so fair, — 
Stretch his hands unto the air : 

The olive boughs are sighing. ; 

Fadeth life as fadeth day, dying ; ' 

But the foe is flying : | 

There's an urn beneath the shade j 

By the olive branches made : \ 

The olive boughs are sighing. | 



SIR WILLIAM ROWAN HAMILTON. 
1805—1865. 



A PRAYER. 



O brooding Spirit of Wisdom and of Love ! j 

Whose mighty wings even now o'ershadow me, — ; 

Absorb me in thine own immensity, < 

And raise me far my finite self above ! ] 

Purge vanity away, and the weak care 1 



THOMAS WADE. 149 

That name or fame of me may widely spread ; 

And the deep wish keep burning in their stead 

Thy bHssful influence afar to bear, 

Or see it borne ! Let no desire of ease, 

No lack of courage, faith, or love, delay 

Mine own steps on that high thought-paven way 

In which my soul her clear commission sees : 

Yet with an equal joy let me behold 

Thy chariot o'er that way by others roll'd ! 



THOxMAS WADE. 

1805—1876. 



THE NET-BRAIDERS. 

Within a low-thatch'd hut, built in a lane 

Whose narrow pathway tends toward the ocean, 

A solitude which, save of some rude swain 

Or fisherman, doth scarce know human motion, — 

Or of some silent poet to the main 
Straying, to offer infinite devotion 

To God in the free universe, — there dwelt 

Two women old, to whom small store was dealt 

Of the world's mis-named good, mother and child, 
Both aged and mateless. These two life sustain'd 

By braiding fishing-nets ; and so beguil'd 

Time and their cares, and little e'er complain'd 

Of Fate or Providence : resign'd and mild. 

Whilst day by day, for years, their hour-glass rain'd 

Its trickling sand, to track the wing of Time, 

They toil'd in peace : and much there was sublime 

In their obscure contentment : of mankind 

They little knew, or reck'd ; but for their being 

They bless'd their Maker, with a simple mind ; 
And in the constant gaze of his all-seeing 



I50 THOMAS WADE. 

Eye, to his poorest creatures never blind, 

Deeming tliey dwelt, they bore their sorrows fleeing, 
Glad still to live, but not afraid to die, 
In calm expectance of Eternity. 

And since I first did greet those braiders poor, 

If ever I behold fair women's cheeks 
Sin-pale in stately mansions, where the door 

Is shut to all but Pride, my cleft heart seeks 
For refuge in my thoughts, — which then explore 

That pathway lone near which the wild sea breaks : 
And to Imagination's humble eyes 
That hut, with all its want, is Paradise. 



NYMPHS. 

Beautiful Things of Old ! why are ye gone for ever 
Out of the earth ? O, why ? 
Dryad and Oread, and ye, Nereids blue ! 
Whose presence woods and hills and sea-rocks knew. 
Ye have pass'd from Faith's dim eye. 
And save by poet's lip your names are honour'd never. 

The sun on the calm sea sheddeth a golden glory. 
The rippling waves break whitely. 
The sands are level and the shingle bright. 
The green cliffs wear the pomp of heaven's light, 
And sea-weeds idle lightly 
Over the rocks ; but ye appear not. Dreams of Story ! 

Nymphs of the Sea ! Faith's heart hath fled from ye — hath 
fled; 

Ye are her boasted scorn ; 
Save to the poet's soul, the sculptor's thought. 
The painter's fancy, ye are now as nought : 
Mute is old Triton's horn, 
And with it half the voice of the Old World is dead. 



JOHN STERLING. 1 51 

Our creeds are not less vain ; our sleeping life still dreams ; 
The present, like the past, 
Passes in joy and sorrow, love and shame ; 
Truth dwells as deep ; wisdom is yet a name ; 
Life still to death flies fast ; 
And the same shrouded light from the dark future gleams. 

Spirits of vale and hill, of river and of ocean, — 
Ye thousand deities ! 
Over the earth be president again ; 
And dance upon the mountain and the main 
In view of mortal eyes : 
Love us, and be beloved, with the Old Time's devotion ! 



JOHN STERLING. 

1806 — 1844. 



DMDALUS. 

Wail for Daedalus, all that is fairest ! 

All that is tuneful in air or wave ! 
Shapes whose beauty is truest and rarest. 

Haunt with your lamps and spells his grave ! 

Statues ! bend your heads in sorrow : 

Ye that glance amid ruins old. 
That know not a past nor expect a morrow, 

On many a moonlight Grecian wold. 

By sculptured cave and speaking river. 
Thee, Daedalus ! oft the Nymphs recall ; 

The leaves with a sound of winter quiver, 
Murmur thy name, and withering fall. 

Yet are thy visions in soul the grandest 
Of all that crowd on the tear-dimm'd eye, 

Though, Daedalus ! thou no more commandest 
New stars to that ever widening sky. 



152 JOHN STERLING. 

Ever thy phantoms arise before us, 
Our loftier brothers, but one in blood; 

By bed and table they lord it o'er us, 

With looks of beauty and words of good. 

Calmly they show us mankind victorious 
O'er all that is aimless, blind, and base ; 

Their presence has made our nature glorious, 
Unveiling our night's illumined face. 

Thy toil has won them a god-like quiet; 

Thou hast wrought their path to a lovely sphere ; 
Their eyes to peace rebuke our riot 

And shape us a home of refuge here. 

For Djedalus breathed in them his spirit^ 

In them their sire his beauty sees : 
We too, a younger brood, inherit 

The gifts and blessings bestow'd on these. 

But ah ! their wise and graceful seeming 
Recalls the more that the Sage is gone : 

Weeping we wake from deceitful dreaming 
And find our voiceless chamber lone. 

Dsedalus ! thou from the twilight fle^st 

Which thou with visions hast made so bright ; 

And when no more those shapes thou seest, 
Wanting thine eye they lose their light. 

Even in the noblest of Man's creations, 
Those fresh worlds round this old of ours, 

When the Seer is gone, the orphan'd nations 
See but the tombs of perish'd powers. 

Wail for Daedalus, Earth and Ocean ! 

Stars and Sun ! lament for him ; 
Ages ! quake in strange commotion ; 

All ye realms of Life ! be dim ! 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 1 53 

Wail for Daedalus ! awful Voices 

From earth's deep centre mankind appal. 

Seldom ye sound, and then Death rejoices : 
For he knows that then the Mightiest fall. 



WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 

1806 — 1870. 



THE LOST PLEIAD. 

Not in the sky, 

Where it was seen, 

Nor on the white tops of the glistening wave. 

Nor in the mansions of the hidden deep 

(Though green 

And beautiful its caves of mystery) 

Shall the bright watcher have 

A place, and as of old high station keep. 

Gone ! gone ! 

O, never more to cheer 

The mariner who holds his course alone 

On the Atlantic, through the weary night 

When the stars turn to watchers and do sleep, 

Shall it appear, 

With the sweet fixedness of certain light 

Down-shining on the shut eyes of the deep. 

Vain ! vain ! 

Hopeful most idly then shall he look forth, 

That mariner from his bark. 

Howe'er the North 

Doth raise his certain lamp when tempests lower, 

He sees no more that perish'd light again ; 

And gloomier grows the hour 

V/hich may not, through the thick and crowding dark, 

Restore that lost and loved One to her tower. 



154 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. 

He looks, — the shepherd on Chaldea's hills 

Tending his flocks, — 

And wonders the rich beacon doth not blaze, 

Gladdening his gaze, 

And from his dreary watch along the rocks 

Guiding him safely home through perilous ways. 

How stands he in amaze, 

Still wondering as the drowsy silence fills 

The sorrowful scene and every hour distils 

Its leaden dews ! how chafes he at the night, 

Still slow to bring the expected and sweet light 

So natural to his sight ! 

And lone, 

Where its first splendours shone, 

Shall be that pleasant company of stars : 

How should they know that death 

Such perfect beauty mars ? 

And, like the earth, its common bloom and breath. 

Fallen from on high. 

Their lights grow blasted by its touch, and die, — 

All their concerted springs of harmony 

Snapp'd rudely, and the generous music gone. 

A strain, a mellow strain 

Of wailing sweetness, fill'd the earth and sky : 
The stars lamenting in unborrow'd pain 
That one of the Selected Ones must die. 
Must vanish, when most lovely, from the rest ! 
Alas ! 'tis evermore the destiny : 
The hope heart-cherish'd is the soonest lost ; 
The flower first budded soonest feels the frost : 
Are not the shortest-lived still loveliest ? 
And, like the pale star shooting down the sky, 
Look they not ever brightest when they fly 
The desolate home they bless'd ? 



NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 155 | 

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 

1807— 1867. 



TWO WOMEN. 
The shadows lay along Broadway, 

'Twas near the twilight-tide, 
And slowly there a Lady fair 

Was walking in her pride : 
Alone walk'd she ; but viewlessly 

Walk'd spirits at her side. 

Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet, 
And Honour charm'd the air ; 

And all astir look'd kind on her, 
And call'd her good as fair : 

For all God ever gave to her 
She kept with chary care. 

She kept with care her beauties rare 

From lovers warm and true, 
For her heart was cold to all but gold. 

And the rich came not to woo : 
But honour'd well are charms to sell, 

If priests the selling do. 

Now walking there was One more fair, 

A slight Girl, lily pale ; 
And she had unseen company 

To make the spirit quail : 
'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn 

And nothing could avail. 

No mercy now can clear her brow 
For this world's peace to pray : 

For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air. 
Her woman's heart gave way : 

But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven 
By man is cursed alway. 



156 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

1807— 1882. 



THE ARROW AND THE SONG. 

I shot an arrow into the air ; 
It fell to earth, I knew not where : 
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight 
Could not follow it in its flight. 

I breathed a song into the air ; 
It fell to earth, I knew not where : 
For who has sight so keen and strong, 
That it can follow the flight of song ? 

Long, long afterward, in an oak 
I found the arrow, still unbroke ; 
And the song, from beginning to end, 
I found again in the heart of a friend. 

THE LIGHT OF STARS. 

The night is come, but not too soon ; 

And sinking silently. 
All silently, the little moon 

Drops down behind the sky. 

There is no light in earth or heaven 
But the cold light of stars ; 

And the first watch of night is given 
To the red planet Mars. 

Is it the tender star of love, 
The star of love and dreams ? 

O no ! from that blue tent above 
A hero's armour gleams. 

And earnest thoughts within me rise 
When I behold afar, 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 15/ 

Suspended in the evening skies, 
The shield of that red star. 

star of strength ! I see thee stand 
And smile upon my pain ; 

Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand, 
And I am strong again. 

Within my breast there is no light 
But the cold light of stars : 

1 give the first watch of the night 

To the red planet Mars. 

The star of the unconquer'd will : 

' He rises in my breast, 
Serene, and resolute, and still, 
And calm, and self-possess'd. 

And thou too, whosoe'er thou art. 

That readest this brief psalm ! 
As one by one thy hopes depart. 

Be resolute and calm ! 

O, fear not in a world like this ! 

And thou shalt know ere long. 
Know how sublime a thing it is 

To suffer and be strong. 

THE CUMBERLAND, 

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay. 

On board of the Cumberland, sloop of war ; 

And at times from the fortress across the bay 

The alarum of drums swept past. 
Or a bugle blast 
From the camp on the shore. 

Then far away to the South uprose 
A little feather of snow-white smoke ; 



IS8 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

And we knew that the iron ship of our foes 
Was steadily steering its course 

To try the force 

Of our ribs of oak. 

Down upon us heavily runs, 
Silent and sullen, the floating fort ; 
Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns, 
And leaps the terrible death 

With fiery breath 

From each open port. 

We are not idle, but send her straight 
Defiance back in a full broadside : 
As hail rebounds from a roof of slate, 
Rebounds our heavier hail 

From each iron scale 

Of the monster's hide. 

** Strike your flag ! " the rebel cries. 

In his arrogant old plantation strain ; 
" Never ! " our gallant Morris replies, — 
*' It is better to sink than to yield." 

And the whole air peal'd 
With the cheers of our men. 

Then, like a kraken huge and black. 
She crush'd our ribs in her iron grasp : 
Down went the Cumberland, all a wrack. 
With a sudden shudder of death 

And the cannon's breath 

For her dying gasp. 

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay, 

Still floated our flag at the mainmast-head. 

Lord ! how beautiful was thy day : 

Every waft of the air 

Was a whisper of prayer, 
Or a diro-e for the Dead. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 1 59 

Ho ! brave hearts that went down in the seas ! 
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream ; 
Ho ! brave land ! with hearts like these 
Thy flag, that is rent in twain, 

Shall be one again, 

And without a seam ! 



EXCELSIOR. I 

The shades of night were falling fast | 

As through an Alpine village pass'd \ 

A youth who bore, 'mid snow and ice, .\ 

A banner with the strange device — j 

Excelsior ! \ 

His brow was sad, his eye beneath J 

Flash'd like a falchion from its sheath ; | 

And like a silver clarion rung \ 

The accents of that unknown tongue — : 

Excelsior ! '\ 

In happy homes he saw the light 

Of household fires gleam warm and bright ; \ 

Above, the spectral glaciers shone : | 

And from his lips escaped a groan — \ 
Excelsior ! 

Try not the Pass ! " the old man said ; j 
Dark lowers the tempest over-head, 

The roaring torrent is deep and wide ! " 1 

And loud that clarion voice replied — ;■ 

Excelsior ! i 



*' O stay ! " the maiden said, " and rest ) 

Thy weary head upon this breast ! " |j 

A tear stood in his bright blue eye ; j 

But still he answer'd, with a sigh, \ 

Excelsior ! \ 



l6o HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. 

** Beware the pine-tree's withered branch ! 
Beware the awful avalanche ! " 
This was the peasant's last Good-night : 
A voice replied, far up the height, 
Excelsior ! 

At break of day, as heavenward 
The pious monks of St. Bernard 
Utter'd the oft-repeated prayer, 
A voice cried through the startled air — 
Excelsior ! 

A traveler, by the faithful hound. 
Half-buried in the snow was found, 
Still grasping in his hand of ice 
That banner with the strange device — 
Excelsior ! 

There, in the twilight cold and grey, 
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay ; 
And from the sky, serene and far, 
A voice fell like a falling star — 
Excelsior ! 

THE RAINY DA V. 

The day is cold and dark and dreary ; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary ; 
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, 
But at every gust the dead leaves fall : 
And the day is dark and dreary. 

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary ; 
It rains, and the wind is never weary ; 
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering pnst. 
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast. 
And the days are dark and dreary. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. l6l 

Be still, sad heart ! and cease repining : 
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining ; 
Thy fate is the common fate of all : 
Into each life some rain must fall, 
Some days must be dark and dreary. 

CHILDREN. 

Come to me, O ye children ! 

For I hear you at your play : 
And the questions that perplex'd me 

Have vanish'd quite away. 

Ye open the Eastern windows 

That look toward the sun, 
Where thoughts are singing swallows 

And the brooks of morning run. 

In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine, 
In your thoughts the brooklets flow : 

But in mine is the wind of Autumn 
And the first fall of the snow. 

Ah ! what would the world be to us, 

If the children were no more ? 
We should dread the desert behind us 

Worse than the dark before. 

What the leaves are to the forest, 

With light and air for food. 
Ere their sweet and tender juices 

Elave been harden'd into wood, — 

That to the world are children : 

Through them it feels the glow 
Of a brighter and sunnier climate 

Than reaches the trunks below. 

Come to me, O ye children! 
And whisper in my ear 
II.— II 



1 62 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

What the birds and the winds are singing 
In your sunny atmosphere. 

For what are all our contrivings, 

And the wisdom of our books, 
When compared with your caresses 

And the gladness of your looks ? 

Ye are better than all the ballads 

That ever were sung or said : 
For ye are living poems, 

And all the rest are dead. 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

1807— 



IN SCHOOL-DAYS. \ 

Still sits the school-house by the road, j 

A ragged beggar, sunning : 1 

Around it still the sumachs grow, j 

And blackberry vines are running. 

Within the master's desk is seen, 

Deep-scarr'd by raps official ; - 

The warping floor, the batter'd seats, j 

The jack-knife's carved initial ; \ 

1 

The charcoal frescoes on its wall ; \ 

Its door's worn sill, betraying \ 

The feet that, creeping slow to school, * 

Went storming out to playing. ^ 

Long years ago a winter sun || 

Shone over it at setting ; \ 

Lit up its Western window panes 
And low eaves icy fretting. 

It touch'd the tangled golden curls, ;J5 

And brown eyes full of grieving, * 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 1 63 - 

i: 

Of One who still her steps delay'd ( 
When all the school were leaving. 

For near her stood the little boy - 

Her childish favour singled, '' 

His cap puU'd low upon a face ' 

Where pride and shame were mingled. ! 

Pushing with restless feet the snow } 

To right and left, he linger'd, 

As restlessly her tiny hands \ 

The blue-check'd apron finger'd. | 

He saw her lift her eyes ; he felt 

The soft hand's light caressing ; l 

And heard the tremble of her voice, ) 

As if a fault confessing : ! 

*' I'm sorry that I spell'd the word ; ' 

I hate to go above you, "; 

Because " (the brown eyes lower fell), « 

" Because, you see, I love you." <i 

Still memory to a grey-hair'd man ) 

That sweet child-face is showing : j 

Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 1 

Have forty years been growing. | 

He lives to learn, in life's hard school, : 

How few who pass above him 
Lament their triumph and his loss. 

Like her, — because they love him. i 



TELLING THE BEES. 

Here is the place : right over the hill 

Runs the path I took ; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 



1 64 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIEK 

There is the house, with the gate red-barr'd, 

And the poplars tall, 
And the barn's brown length, and the cattle yard. 

And the white horns tossing above the wall. 

There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun ; 

And dov/n by the brink 
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed o'er-run. 

Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink. 

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes, 

Heavy and slow ; 
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows. 

And the same brook sings, of a year ago. 

There's the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze ; 

And the June sun warm 
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees. 

Setting, as then, over Fernside Farm. 

I mind me how, with a lover's care. 

From my Sunday coat 
I brush'd off the burrs, and smoothed my hair, 

And cool'd at the brookside my brow and throat. 

Since we parted a month had pass'd, — 

To love a year ; 
Down through the beeches I look'd at last 

On the little red gate and the well-sweep near. 

I can see it all now, — the slant-wise rain 

Of light through the leaves. 
The sun-down's blaze on her window-pane, 

The bloom of her roses under the eaves. 

Just the same as a month before, 

The house and the trees. 
The barn's brown gable, the vine by the door, — 

Nothing changed but the hives of bees. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 165 

Before them, under the garden wall, 

Forward and back. 
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small, 

Draping each hive with a shred of black. 

Trembling I listen'd : the summer sun 

Had the chill of snow ; 
For I knew she was telling the bees of One 

Gone on the journey we all must go. 

Then I said to myself — My Mary weeps 

For the Dead to-day : 
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps 

The fret and the pain of his age away. 

But her dog whined low ; on the doorway sill, J 

With his cane to his chin, I 

The old man sat ; and the chore-girl still '' 

Sang to the bees stealing out and in. ;j 

And the song she was singing ever since jii 

In my ear sounds on : ' 

" Stay at home, pretty bees ! fly not hence ! \ 

Mistress Mary is dead and gone ! " i 

ICHABOD. \ 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore ! \ 

The glory from his grey hairs gone | 

For evermore ! 1 

'\ 

Revile him not ! the Tempter hath « 

A snare for all ; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall. 

O ! dumb be passion's stormy rage, 

When he who might 
Have lighted up and led his age ! 

Falls back in night ! 1 



l66 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

Scorn ? Would the angels laugh to mark 

A bright soul driven, 
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark 

From hope and heaven ? 

Let not the land once proud of him 

Insult him now; 
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim 

Dishonour'd brow ! 

But let its humbled sons, instead, 

From sea to lake 
A long lament as for the Dead 

In sadness make ! 

Of all we loved and honour'd nought 

Save power remains, — 
A fallen angel's pride of thought, 

Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone ; from those great eyes 

The soul hath fled : 
When faith is lost, when honour dies, 

The Man is dead. 

Then pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame : 
Walk backward, with averted gaze, 

And hide the shame ! 



THE RIVER-PATH. 

No bird-song floated down the hill. 
The tangled bank below was still ; 
No rustle from the birchen stem. 
No ripple from the water's hem : 
The dusk of twilight round us grew. 
We felt the falling of the dew. 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 167 

For from us ere the day was done 

The wooded hills shut out the sun. 

But on the river's farther side 

We saw the hill-tops glorified : 

A tender glow, exceeding fair, 

A dream of day without its glare : 

With us the damp, the chill, the gloom ; 

With them the sunset's rosy bloom ! 

While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 

The river roll'd in shade between. 

From out the darkness where we trod 

We gazed upon those hills of God, 

Whose light seem'd not of moon or sun. 

We spake not, but our thought was one. 

We paused, as if from that bright shore 

Beckon'd our Dear Ones gone before ; 

And still'd our beating hearts to hear 

The voices lost to mortal ear. 

Sudden our pathway turn'd from night : 

The hills swung open to the light ; 

Through their green gates the sunshine show'd, 

A long slant splendour downward flow'd : 

Down glade and glen and bank it roll'd ; 

It bridged the shaded stream with gold ; 

And, borne on piers of mist, allied 

The shadowy with the sunlit side. 

So (pray'd we), when our feet draw near 
The river dark with mortal fear. 
And the night cometh chill with dew, 
O Father ! let thy light break through ! 
So let the hills of doubt divide ! 
So bridge with faith the sunless tide ! 
So let the eyes that fail on earth 
On thy eternal hills look forth. 
And in thy beckoning Angels know 
The Dear Ones whom we loved below ! 



l68 RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. 

RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH. 

1807— 



THE LENT JEWELS. 

In schools of wisdom all the day was spent : 

His steps at eve the Rabbi homeward bent, 

With homeward thoughts which dwelt upon the wife 

And two fair children who consoled his life. 

She, meeting at the threshold, led him in. 

And, with these words preventing, did begin : — 

Ever rejoicing at your wish'd return, 

Yet am I most so now : for since this morn 

I have been much perplex'd and sorely tried 

Upon one point which you shall now decide. 

Some years ago, a friend into my care 

Some jewels gave, — rich precious gems they were ; 

But having given them in my charge, this friend 

Did afterward nor come for them, nor send, 

But left them in my keeping for so long 

That now it almost seems to me a wrong 

That he should suddenly arrive to-day. 

To take those jewels which he left away. 

What think you ? Shall I freely yield them back, 

And with no murmuring ? — so henceforth to lack 

Those gems myself, which I had learn'd to see 

Almost as mine for ever, mine in fee." 

What question can be here ? Your own true heart 

Must needs advise you of the only part : 

That may be claim'd again which was but lent, 

And should be yielded with no discontent; 

Nor surely can we find herein a wrong, 

That it was left us to enjoy so long." 

Good is the word ! " she answer'd : " may we now 
And evermore that it is good allow ! " 
And, rising, to an inner chamber led ; 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. 169 

And there she show'd him, stretch'd upon one bed, 
Two children pale. And he the jewels knew 
Which God had lent him and resumed anew. 

EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

1809 — 1849. 



THE BELLS. 



Hear the sledges with the bells, 
Silver bells ! 
What a world of merriment their melody foretells ! 
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, 

In the icy air of night ! 
While the stars that oversprinkle 
All the heavens seem to twinkle 

With a crystalline delight : 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme. 
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells 
From the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells, — 
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. 

Hear the mellow wedding bells. 
Golden bells ! 
What a world of happiness their harmony fortells ! 
Through the balmy air of night 
How they ring out their delight ! 
From the molten-golden notes, 

And all in tune. 
What a liquid ditty floats 
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats 
On the moon ! 
O, from out the sounding cells 
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells ! 
How it swells ! 
How it dwells 



I/O EDGAR ALLAN POE. . 

On the future ! how it tells j 

Of the rapture that impels j 

To the swinging and the ringing ' 

Of the bells, bells, bells. 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 

Bells, bells, bells,— ] 

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells ! j 

Hear the loud alarum bells, 

Brazen bells ! 

What a tale of terror now their turbulency tells ! i 

In the startled ear of night ; 

How they scream out their affright ! j 

Too much horrified to speak, \ 

They can only shriek, shriek , 

Out of tune, \ 

In the clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, i 

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire ] 

Leaping higher, higher, higher, | 

With a desperate desire, 

And a resolute endeavour, i 

Now, now to sit or never i 

By the side of the pale-faced moon. i 

O the bells, bells, bells, ] 

What a tale their terror tells j 

Of despair ! 1 

How they clang, and clash, and roar! ; 

What a horror they outpour i 
On the bosom of the palpitating air ! 
Yet the ear it fully knows, 

By the twanging, | 

And the clanging. 

How the danger ebbs and flows ; ■ 
Yet the ear distinctly tells, 

In the jangling, 

And the wrangling, 



EDGAR ALLAN POE. I/I 

How the danger sinks and swells, 
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the 
bells,— 

Of the bells. 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells, — 
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells! 

Hear the tolling of the bells, 
Iron bells ! 
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels ! 
In the silence of the night 
How we shiver with affright 
At the melancholy menace of their tone ! 
For every sound that floats 
From the rust within their throats 

Is a groan. 
And the people (ah ! the people. 
They that dwell up in the steeple. 

All alone. 
And who tolling, tolling, tolling, 

In that muffled monotone, 
Feel a glory in so rolling 

On the human heart a stone), 
They are neither man nor woman. 
They are neither brute nor human, 

They are Ghouls : 
And their king it is who tolls ; 
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, 
Rolls, 
A psean from the bells ! 
And his merry bosom swells 

With the paean of the bells ; 
And he dances, and he yells, 
Keeping time, time, time. 
In a sort of Runic rhyme 



172 EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

To the paean of the bells, 
Of the bells ! 
Keeping time, time, time, 
In a sort of Runic rhyme. 
To the throbbing of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells. 
To the sobbing of the bells, — 
Keeping time, time, time, 
As he knells, knells, knells, 
In a happy Runic rhyme, 
To the rolling of the bells, 

Of the bells, bells, bells, 
To the tolling of the bells, 
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, 
Bells, bells, bells,— 
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells. 



TO HELEN. 

Helen ! thy beauty is to me 

Like those Nicean barks of yore 
That gently o'er a perfumed sea 
The weary way-worn wanderer bore 
To his own native shore. 

On desperate seas long wont to roam. 
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face. 

Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home 

To the glory that was Greece 

And the grandeur that was Rome. 

Lo ! in your brilliant window-niche 
How statue-like I see thee stand, 

The agate lamp within thy hand ! 

Ah, Psych^ ! from the regions which 
Are holy land. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 173 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

1809 — 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS. 

This is the Ship of Pearl which (poets feign) 

Sails the unshadow'd main, 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare, 
Where the cold Sea-Maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl : 

Wreck'd is the Ship of Pearl ; 

And every chamber'd cell, 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 

Before thee lies reveal'd : 
Its iris'd ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unseal'd. 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still as the spiral grew 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new. 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door, 
Stretch'd in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering Sea, 

Cast from her lap, forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is borne 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings. 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings 



174 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul ! 

As the swift seasons roll : 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea ! 



ALFRED TENNYSON, 

1809 — 



TITHONUS. 

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall, 

The vapours weep their burthen to the ground, 

Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath, 

And after many a summer dies the swan. 

Me only cruel immortality 

Consumes : I wither slowly in thine arms, 

Here at the quiet limit of the world, 

A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream 

The ever-silent spaces of the East, 

Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of Morn. 

Alas for this grey shadow, once a man, 

So glorious in his beauty and thy choice, 

Who mad^st him thy chosen, that he seem'd 

To his great heart none other than a God ! 

I ask'd thee — " Give me immortality ! " 

Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile, 

Like wealthy men who care not how they give. 

But thy strong Hours, indignant, work'd their wills, 

And beat me down, and marr'd and wasted me ; 

And, though they could not end me, left me maim'd 

To dwell in presence of immortal youth, 

Immortal Age beside immiortal Youth, 

And all I was in ashes. Can thy love, 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 1/5 

Thy beauty, make amends ? though even now 

Close over us the silver star, thy guide, 

Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears 

To hear me. Let me go ! Take back thy gift ! 

Why should a man desire in any way 

To vary from the kindly race of men, 

Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance 

Where all should pause, as is most meet for all ? 

A soft air fans the cloud apart ; there comes 
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born. 
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals 
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure, 
And bosom beating with a heart renew'd. 
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom ; 
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine 
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team 
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise 
And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes 
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire. 

Lo ! ever thus thou growest beautiful 

In silence ; then, before thine answer given, 

Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek. 

Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears, 
And make me tremble lest a saying learn'd 
In days far off, on that dark earth, be true ? 
The Gods themselves can not recall their gifts." 

Ay me ! ay me ! with what another heart, 

In days far off, and with what other eyes 

I used to watch (if I be he that watch'd) 

The lucid outline forming round thee ; saw 

The dim curls kindle into sunny rings ; 

Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood 

Glow with the glow that slowly crimson'd all 

Thy presence and thy portals, -^while I lay, 



t( 



1/6 ALFRED TENNYSON. | 

1 

Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm j 
With kisses bahnier than half-opening buds 

Of April, and could hear the lips that kiss'd, ] 

Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet : ] 

Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing, j 

While Ilion like a mist rose into towers. -, 

Yet hold me not for ever in thine East ! \ 

How can my nature longer mix with thine ? 'i 

Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold ] 

Are all my lights, and cold my wrinkled feet i 

Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam ,' 

Floats up from those dim fields about the homes 

Of happy men that have the power to die, i 

And grassy barrows of the happier dead. 

Release me and restore me to the ground ! ! 

Thou seest all things, thou wilt see my grave : 

Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn ; i 

I, earth in earth, forget these empty courts 

And thee returning on thy silver wheels. i 



MA/^IAJVA 

" IN THE MOATED GRANGE." 

With blackest moss the flower plots 
Were thickly crusted, one and all; 
The rusted nails fell from the knots 
That held the peach to the garden wall. 
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange, 
Unlifted was the clinking latch. 
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
Upon the lonely moated grange. 

She only said — " My life is dreary. 
He cometh not : " she said. 

She said — " I am aweary, aweary, — 
I would that I were dead ! " 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 177 

Her tears fell with the dews at even, 
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried ; 
She could not look on the sweet heaven 
Either at morn or eventide. 
After the flitting of the bats, 
When thickest dark did trance the sky, 
She drew her casement curtain by, 
And glanced athwart the glooming flats. 

She only said — " The night is dreary. 
He cometh not : " she said. 

She said — *' I am aweary, aweary, — 
I would that I were dead ! " 

Upon the middle of the night, 
Waking, she heard the night fowl crow ; 
The cock sung out an hour ere light ; 
From the dark fen the oxen's low 
Came to her : without hope of change, 
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, 
Till colds winds woke the grey-eyed morn 
About the lonely moated grange. 

She only said — " The day is dreary. 
He cometh not : " she said. 

She said — " I am aweary, aweary, — 
I would that I were dead ! " 

About a stone-cast from the wall, 
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept, 
And o'er it many, round and small. 
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept. 
Hard by a poplar shook alway. 
All silver green with gnarled bark : 
For leagues no other tree did dark 
The level waste, the rounding grey. 

She only said — *' My life is dreary, 
He cometh not : " she said. 

She said — '' I am aweary, aweary, — 
I would that I were dead ! " 

II.— 12 



178 ALFRED TENNYSON. 

And ever when the moon was low, 
And the shrill winds were up and away, 
In the white curtain, to and fro. 
She saw the gusty shadow sway. 
But when the moon was very low. 
And wild winds bound within their cell, 
The shadow of the poplar fell 
Upon her bed, across her brow. 

She only said — '' The night is dreary. 

He cometh not : " she said. 
She said — " I am aweary, aweary, — 

I would that I were dead ! '* 

All day within the dreamy house 
The doors upon their hinges creak'd ; 
The blue fly sing i' the pane ; the mouse 
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd. 
Or from the crevice peer'd about. 
Old faces glimmer'd through the doors, 
Old footsteps trod the upper floors. 
Old voices called her from without. 

She only said — " My life is dreary. 
He cometh not : " she said. 

She said — " I am aweary, aweary, — 
I would that I were dead ! " 

The sparrow's chirrup on the roof. 
The slow clock ticking, and the sound 
Which to the wooing wind aloof 
The poplar made, did all confound 
Her sense ; but most she loathed the hour 
"When the thick-moted sunbeam lay 
Athwart the chambers, and the day 
Was sloping toward his western bower. 

Then said she — " I am very dreary. 
He will not come : " she said. 

She wept, — " I am aweary, aweary, — 
O God, that I were dead ! " 



ALFRED TENNYSON. 1/9 



THE POET'S SONG. 

The rain had fallen ; the Poet arose, 

He pass'd by the town and out of the street : 
A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, 

And Waves of shadow went over the wheat : 
And he sat him down in a lonely place, 

And chanted a melody loud and sweet, 
That made the wild swan pause in her cloud 

And the lark drop down at his feet. 

The swallow stopp'd as he hunted the bee. 

The snake slipp'd under a spray. 
The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak 

And stared, with his foot on the prey ; 
And the nightingale thought — " I have sung many songs, 

But never a one so gay, — 
For he sings of what the world will be 

When the years have died away." 



THE DAYS THAT ARE NO AW RE. 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean ; 
Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes 
In looking on the happy autumn fields 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail 

That brings our friends up from the under world, 

Sad as the last which reddens over one 

That sinks with all we love below the verge, — 

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more ! 

Ah ! sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds 
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes 



l8o RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square, — 
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more ! 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd 
On lips that are for others ; deep as love. 
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret, 
O death in life ! the days that are no more. 

RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. 

(lord HOUGHTON.) 
1809— 



THE BROOK-SIDE. 

I wander'd by the brook-side, 

I wander'd by the mill, — 
I could not hear the brook flow. 

The noisy wheel was still ; 
There was no burr of grasshopper. 

No chirp of any bird : 
But the beating of my own heart 

Was all the sound I heard. 

I sat beneath the elm-tree ; 

I watch'd the long long shade. 
And as it grew still longer 

I did not feel afraid : 
For I listen'd for a footfall, 

I listen'd for a word, — 
But the beating of my own heart 

Was all the sound I heard. 

He came not, — no! he came not ; 

The night came on alone. 
The little stars sat one by one 

Each on his golden throne ; 
The evening wind pass'd by my cheek. 

The leaves above were stirr'd, — 



RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. l8l 

But the beating of my own heart 
Was all the sound I heard. 

Fast silent tears were flowing, 

When something stood behind ; 
A hand was on my shoulder, — 

I knew its touch was kind ; 
It drew me nearer, nearer ; 

We did not speak one word, — 
For the beating of our own hearts 

Was all the sound we heard. 



THE TREASURE SHIP. 

My heart is freighted full of love, 

As full as any argosy. 

With gems below and gems above, — 

And ready for the open sea, 

For the wind is blowing summerly : 

Full strings of Nature's beaded pearl, 
Sweet tears, composed in amorous ties 
And turkis-lockets, that no churl 
Hath fashion'd out mechanic-wise, 
But all made up of thy blue eyes ; 

And girdles wove of subtle sound. 
And thoughts not trusted to the air. 
Of antique mould, the same as bound 
In Paradise the primal pair 
Before Love's arts and niceness were ; 

And carcanets of living sighs. 

Gums that have dropp'd from Love's own stem ; 

And one small jewel most I prize, 

The darling gaud of all of them : 

I wot, so rare and fine a gem 

Ne'er glow'd on Eastern anadem. 



l82 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 

I've cased the rubies of thy smiles 
In rich and triply-plated gold ; 
But this no other wealth defiles : 
Itself — itself can only hold — 
The stealthy kiss on Maple-Wold. 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 
1811— 1863. 



AT THE CHURCH GATE. ^ 

Although I enter not, \ 

Yet round about the spot I 

Ofttimes I hover; \ 

And near the sacred gate, ' 

With longing eyes I wait, ■ 

Expectant of her. | 

The Minster bell tolls out 
Above the city's rout 

And noise and humming ; 
They've hush'd the Minster bell ; 

The organ 'gins to swell : j 

She's coming ! she's coming ! | 

My Lady comes at last, ' 

Timid and stepping fast < 

And hastening hither, \ 

With modest eyes down-cast : i 

She comes — she's here — she's pass'd. ' 

May heaven go with her ! \ 

Kneel undisturb'd, fair Saint! 

Pour out your praise or plaint \ 

Meekly and duly ! '.; 

I will not enter there ,> 

To sully your pure prayer ;^ 

With thoughts unruly. -X 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. 1 83 

But suffer me to pace 
Round the forbidden place, 

Lingering a minute ! 
Like outcast spirits who wait 
And see through heaven's gate 

Angels within it. 



THE AGE OF WISDOM. 

Ho, pretty Page with the dimpled chin 
That never has known the barber's shear ! 

All your wish is woman to win : 

This is the way that boys begin : 
Wait till you come to Forty Year ! 

Curly gold locks cover foolish brains ; 

Billing and cooing is all your cheer, 
Sighing, and singing of midnight strains 
Under Bonnybell's window panes : 

Wait till you come to Forty Year ! 

Forty times over let Michaelmas pass. 
Grizzling hair the brain doth clear : 
Then you know a boy is an ass, 
Then you know the worth of a lass, 
Once you have come to Forty Year. 

Pledge me round ! I bid ye declare, 

All good fellows whose beards are grey ! 
Did not the fairest of the fair 
Common grow and wearisome ere 
Ever a month was pass'd away ? 

The reddest lips that ever were kiss'd. 

The brightest eyes that ever have shone, 
May pray and whisper, and we not list, 
Or look away ; and never be miss'd 
Ere yet ever a month is gone. 



1 84 SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE. 

Gillian's dead : God rest her bier! 

How I loved her twenty years syne ! 
Marian's married : but I sit here, 
Alone and merry at Forty Year, 

Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. 



SIR FRANCIS HASTINGS DOYLE. 

1810— 1883. 



THE PRIVATE OF THE BUFFS. 

Last night, among his fellow roughs, 

He jested, quaff 'd, and swore, — 
A drunken Private of the Buffs, 

Who never look'd before : 
To-day, beneath the foeman's froAvn, 

He stands in Elgin's place. 
Ambassador from Britain's crown. 

And type of all her race. 

Poor, reckless, rude, low-born, untaught, 

Bewilder'd, and alone, 
A heart with English instinct fraught 

He yet can call his own. 
Ay ! tear his body limb from limb ! 

Bring cord, or axe, or flame ! 
He only knows that not through him 

Shall England come to shame. 

Far Kentish hop-fields round him seem'd 

Like dreams to come and go ; 
Bright leagues of cherry-blossom gleam'd. 

One sheet of living snow ; 
The smoke above his father's door 

In grey soft eddyings hung, — 
Must he then watch it rise no more, 

Doom'd by himself, so young? 



ALFRED DOMETT. I85 

Yes ! honour calls : with strength like steel 

He put the vision by. 
Let dusky Indians whine and kneel ! 

An English lad must die. 
And thus, with eyes that would not shrink, 

With knee to man unbent, 
Unfaltering on its dreadful brink, 

To his red grave he went. 

Vain mightiest fleets of iron framed, 

Vain those all-shattering guns, 
Unless proud England keep untamed 

The strong heart of her sons ! 
So let his name through Europe ring ! 

A man of mean estate 
Who died as firm as Sparta's king, 

Because his soul was great. 

ALFRED DOMETT. 
1811— 



WHAT MATTER? 

What matter, what matter, O friend ! though the sea 

In lines of silvery fire may slide 

O'er the sands so tawny and tender and wide. 

Murmuring soft as a bee ? — 
No matter ! no matter ! in sooth, said he : 
But the sunlit sands and the silvery play 
Are a truthful smile long pass'd away : 

No more to me. 

II 

What matter, what matter, dear friend ! can it be 
If a long blue stripe, dim-swelling and dark 

th the lighter blue headland. 

All of the town we can see ? 



1 86 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

No matter ! no matter ! in truth, said he : 
But the streak, that fades and fades as we part, 
Is a broken voice and a breaking heart : 
No more to me. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

1809 — 1 861. 



A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. 

What was he doing, the great God Pan, 

Down in the reeds by the river? 
Spreading ruin and scattering ban. 
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, 
And breaking the golden lilies afloat 
With the dragon-fly on the river. 

He tore out a reed, the great God Pan, 

From the deep cool bed of the river : 
The limpid water turbidly ran, 
And the broken lilies a-dying lay, 
And the dragon-fly had fled away, 

Ere he brought it out of the river. 

High on the shore sat the great God Pan, 

While turbidly flow'd the river ; 
And hack'd and hew'd, as a great God can. 
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed^ 
Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed 
To prove it fresh from the river. 

He cut it short, did the great God Pan, 
(How tall it stood in the river ! ) 

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, 

Steadily from the outside ring, 

And notch'd the poor dry empty thing 
In holes, as he sat by the river. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 1 8/ 

" This is the way," laugh'd the great God Pan, 

Laugh'd while he sat by the river, — 
*' The only way, since Gods began 

To make sweet music, they could succeed." 
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed. 
He blew in power, by the river. 

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan ! 

Piercing sweet by the river ! 
Blinding sweet, O great God Pan ! 
The sun on the hill forgot to die. 
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 

Came back to dream on the river. 

Yet half a beast is the great God Pan, 

To laugh as he sits by the river, 
Making a poet out of a man ! 
The true Gods sigh for the cost and pain, — 
For the reed which grows nevermore again 

As a reed with the reeds in the river. 



A FALSE STEP. 

Sweet ! thou hast trod on a heart : 
Pass ! there's a world full of men ; 

And women as fair as thou art 

Must do such things now and then. 

Thou only hast stepp'd unaware, 
(Malice not one can impute) ; 

And why should a heart have been there 
In the way of a fair woman's foot ? 

It was not a stone that could trip, 
Nor was it a thorn that could rend : 

Put up thy proud under-lip ! 

'Twas merely the heart of a friend. 



1 88 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

And yet, peradventure, one day 

Thou sitting alone at the glass, 
Remarking the bloom gone away, 

Where the smile in its dimplement was. 

And seeking around thee in vain, 
From hundreds who flatter'd before. 

Such a word as " O, not in the main 

Do I hold thee less precious, but more : " 

Thou wilt sigh, very like, on thy part — 
*' Of all I have known or can know 

I wish I had only that Heart 
I trod upon ages ago ! " 

THjE SEA-MEJV. 
How joyously the young Sea-Mew 
Lay dreaming on the waters blue. 
Whereon our little bark had thrown 
A forward shade, the only one : 
But shadows aye will man pursue. 

Familiar with the waves, and free 
As if their own white foam were he, 
His heart upon the heart of ocean 
Lay, learning all its mystic motion 
And throbbing to the throbbing sea. 

And such a brightness in his eye. 
As if the ocean and the sky 
Within him had lit up and nursed 
A soul God gave him not at first. 
To comprehend their majesty. 

We were not cruel, yet did sunder 

His white wing from the blue waves under, 

And bound it, — while his fearless eyes 

Shone up to ours in calm surprise, 

As deeming us some ocean wonder. 



ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 189 

We bore our ocean bird unto 
A grassy place where he might view 
The flowers that curtsey to the bees, 
The waving of the tall green trees. 
The falling of the silver dew. 

But flowers of earth were pale to him 
Who had seen the rainbow fishes swim ; 
And when earth's dew around him lay 
He thought of ocean's winged spray : 
And his eye waxed sad and dim. 

The green trees round him only made 
A prison with their darksome shade ; 
And droop'd his wing, and mourned he 
For his own boundless glittering sea, — 
Albeit he knew not they could fade. 

Then One her gladsome face did bring, 
Her gentle voice's murmuring. 
In ocean's stead his heart to move 
And teach him what was human love : 
He thought it a strange mournful thing. 

He lay down in his grief to die 
(First looking to the sea-like sky 
That hath no waves) : because, alas ! 
Our human touch did on him pass, 
And with our touch our agony. 



SONNETS. 

Unlike are we, unlike, O Princely Heart I 

Unlike our uses and our destinies. 

Our ministering two angels look surprise 

On one another as they strike athwart 

Their wings in passing. Thou (bethink thee !) art 

A guest for queens to social pageantries, 



I90 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 

With gages, from a hundred brighter eyes 
Than tears even can make mine, to ply thy part 
Of chief musician. What hast Thou to do 
With looking from the lattice-lights at me, 
A poor tired wandering singer, singing through 
The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree ? 
The chrism is on thine head, on m.ine the dew : 
And Death must dis the level where these agree. 



Go from me ! Yet I feel that I shall stand 
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore, 
Alone upon the threshold of my door 
Of individual life, I shall command 
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 
Serenely in the sunshine as before, 
Without the sense of that which I forebore — 
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 
Doom takes to part us leaves thy heart in mine 
With pulses that beat double. What I do 
And what I dream include Thee, as the wine 
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 
God for myself, he hears that name of thine, 
And sees within my eyes the tears of two. 



Say over again, and yet once over again, 

That thou dost love me ! Though the word repeated 

Should seem "a. cuckoo song," as thou dost treat it. 

Remember never to the hill or plain. 

Valley and wood, without her cuckoo strain 

Comes the fresh Spring in all her green completed ! 

Beloved ! I, amid the darkness greeted 

By a doubtful spirit's voice, in that doubt's pain 

Cry — Speak once more, thou lovest ! Who can fear 

Too many stars, though each in heaven shall roll ; 

Too many flowers, though each shall crown the year ? 



ROBERT BROWNING. I9I 

Say thou dost love me, love me, love me ! toll 
The silver iterance ! — only minding. Dear I 
To love me also in silence, with thy soul. 



First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd 

The fingers of this hand wherewith I write ; 

And ever since it grew more clean and white. 

Slow to world-greetings, quick with its " O list !" 

When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst 

I could not wear here plainer to my sight 

Than that first kiss. The second pass'd in height 

The first, and sought the forehead and half-miss'd, 

Half-falling on the hair. O, beyond meed. 

That was the chrism of Love, which Love's own crown. 

With sanctifying sweetness, did precede. 

The third upon my lips was folded down 

In perfect purple state. Since when indeed 

I have been proud, and said — My Love ! my own ! 

ROBERT BROWNING. 

1812— 



THE LOST LEADER. 

Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a ribbon to stick in his coat ; 

Found the one gift of which Fortune bereft us, 

Lost all the others she lets us devote. 

They with the gold to give doled him out silver. 

So much was theirs who so little allow'd : 

How all our copper had gone for his service ! 

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud. 

We that had loved him so, follow'd him, honour'd him, 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 

Learn'd his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 

Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 



192 ROBERT BROWNING. 

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from their graves ! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen ; 
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves. 

We shall march prospering, not through his presence ; 

Songs may inspirit us, not from his lyre ; 

Deeds will be done, while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire. 

Blot out his name then ! record one lost soul more, 

One task more declined, one more foot-path untrod, 

One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, 

One wrong more for man, one more insult to God ! 

Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 

There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain, 

Forced praise on our part, the glimmer of twilight, 

Ne^er glad confident morning again. 

Best fight on, well, for we taught him ; strike gallantly, 

Menace our heart ere we master his own ! 

Then let him receive the new knowledge, and wait us, 

Pardon'd, in heaven, the first by the Throne 1 

THE MOTH'S KISS. 

The moth's kiss first ! 

Kiss me as if you made believe 

You were not sure, this eve. 
How my face, your flower, had pursed 

Its petals up : so here and there 

You brush it, till I grow aware 
Who wants me, and wide ope I burst ! 

The bee's kiss now ! 

Kiss me as if you enter'd gay 

My heart, at some noon-day, 
A bud that dares not disallow 

The claim, so all is render'd up, 

And passively its shatter'd cup 
Over your head to sleep I bow ! 



ROBERT BROWNING. I93 



EVELYN HOPE. 

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She pluck'd that piece of geranium-flower, 
Beginning to die too, in the glass. 

Little has yet been changed, I think, — 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 

Save two long rays through the hinge's chink. 

Sixteen years old when she died ! 

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name : 
It was not her time to love ; beside, 

Her life had many a hope and aim, 
Duties enough, and little cares ; 

And now was quiet, now astir. 
Till God's hand beckon'd unawares, 

And the sweet white brow is all of her. 

Is it too late then ? Evelyn Hope ! 

What ! your soul was pure and true, 
The good stars met in your horoscope. 

Made you of spirit, fire and dew, — 
And just because I was thrice as old. 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide. 
Each was nought to each — must I be told ? 

We were fellow-mortals — nought beside ? 

No, indeed ! for God above 

Is great to grant as mighty to make. 
And creates the love to reward the love : 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
Delay'd it may be, for more lives yet. 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few : 
Much is to learn and much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 
II.-13 



194 ROBERT BROWNING. ' 

But the time will come — at last it will — ', 

When, Evelyn Hope ! what mean'd, I shall say, 

In the lower earth, in the years long still, ; 

That body and soul so pure and gay ? ; 

Why your hair was amber I shall divine, ; 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red : | 

And what you would do with me, in fine, j 

In the new life come in the old one's stead. \ 

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then ; 

Given up myself so many times, 
Gain'd me the gains of various men, 

Ransack'd the ages, spoil'd the climes : | 

Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, j 

Either I miss'd or itself miss'd me, — j 
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 

What is the issue ? Let us see ! ; 

I loved you, Evelyn ! all the while 

My heart seem'd full as it would hold : i 

There was place and to spare for the frank young smile j 

And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold. ! 

So, hush ! I will give you this leaf to keep ; } 

See ! I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. ] 

There ! that is our secret : go to sleep ! ' 

You will wake and remember, and understand. I 

1 

NIGHT AND MORNING. \ 

'• i 

The grey sea and the long black land, | 

And the yellow half-moon large and low, A 

And the startled little waves that leap .^ 

In fiery ringlets from their sleep ;.| 

As I gain the cove with pushing prow % 
And quench its speed in the slushy sand. 

Then a smile of warm sea-scented beach, 
Three fields to cross till a farm appears ; 
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch 



ROBERT NICOLL. 1 95 

And blue spurt of a lighted match, 

And a voice less loud through its joys and fears 

Than the two hearts beating each to each. 



Round the cape of a sudden came the sea, 
And the sun look'd over the mountain's rim 
And straight was a path of gold for him. 
And the need of a world of men for me. 

ROBERT NICOLL. 
1814— 1837. 



ii 



BONNIE BESSIE LEE. 

Bonnie Bessie Lee had a face fu' o' smiles, 
An' mirth round her ripe lip was aye dancing slee ; 
An' light was the footfa', an' winsome the wiles 
O' the flower o' the parochin, our ain Bessie Lee. 

Wi' the bairnies she would rin, and the school laddies paik. 
And o'er the broomy braes like a fairy would flee, 
Till auld hearts grew young again wi' love for her sake : 
There was life in the blithe blink o' bonnie Bessie Lee. 

She grat wi' the waefu' an' laugh'd wi' the glad ; 
An' light as the wind 'mang the dancers was she ; 
And a tongue that could jeer too the little limmer had, 
Whilk keepit aye her ain side for bonnie Bessie Lee. 

An' she whiles had a sweetheart, an' sometimes had twa, — 

A limmer o' a lassie ! but, atween you and me, 

Her warm wee bit heartie she ne'er threw awa. 

Though monie a ane had sought it frae bonnie Bessie Lee, 

But ten years had gane since I gazed on her last. 
For ten years had parted my auld hame an' me ; 
And I said to mysel' as her mither's door I pass'd — 
Will I ever get anither kiss frae bonnie Bessie Lee ? " 



196 ROBERT NICOLL. 

But Time changes a' things, the ill-natured loon ! 
Were it ever sae rightly, he'll no let it be : 
But I rubbit o' my een, and I thought I would swoon, — 
How the carle had come roun' about our ain Bessie Lee. 

The wee laughing lassie was a gude-vvife growing auld, 
Twa weans at her apron and ane on her knee ; 
She was douce too, an' wise-like, — an' wisdom's sae cauld :— 
I would rather hae the ither ane than this Bessie Lee. 



MENIE. 

Fu' ripe, ripe, was her rosy lip ; 

An' gowden was her hair ; 
An' white, white was her swan-like neek ; 

Her een like starnies were : 
An' raven, raven was her hair ; 

So like the snaw her brow ; 
An' the words that fell from her wee saft mouth 

Were happy words, I trow. 

An' pure, pure was her maiden heart ; 

An' ne'er a thought o' sin 
Durst venture there, — an angel dwelt 

Its borders a' within : 
An' fair as was her sweet bodie, 

Yet fairer was her mind : — 
Menie's the queen amang the flowers, 

The wale o' womankind. 

THE GRAVE OF BURNS. 

By a kirk-yard yett I stood, while many enter'd in : 
Men bow'd wd' toil and age, wi' haffets auld an' thin, 
And ithers in their prime wi' a bearin' proud an' hie, 
An' maidens pure an' bonnie as the daisies o' the lea, 
An' matrons wrinkled auld wi' lyart heads an' grey. 
An' bairns like things owre fair for Death to wede away. 



THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 197 

I stood beside the yett while onward still they went, 

The laird frae out his ha' an' the shepherd frae the bent : 

It seem'd a type o' man and o' the grave's domain, 

But these were livin' a' an' could straight come forth again. 

And o' the bedral auld wi' meikle courtesie 

I speer'd what it might mean, an' he bade me look an' see. 

On the trodden path that led to the house o' worshiping, 
Or before its open doors, there stood nae livin' thing ; 
But awa amang the tombs ilk comer quickly pass'd. 
An' upon ae lowly grave ilk seekin' ee was cast : 
There were sabbin' bosoms there, an' proud yet saften'd eyes. 
And a whisper breathed around — '' There the Loved and 
Honour'd lies ! " 

There was nae a murmur there, the deep-drawn breath was 

hush'd ; 
And o'er the maiden's cheek the tears o' feelin' gush'd ; 
An' the bonnie infant's face was lifted as in prayer ; 
An' manhood's brow was flush'd wi' the thoughts that movin' 

were : — 
I stood beside the grave, and I gazed upon the stone : 
And the name of Robert Burns was engraven thereupon. 



THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS. 

1814 — 1845. 



THE WELCOME. 

Come in the evening, or come in the morning, — 
Come when you're look'd for, or come without warning, - 
Kisses and welcome you'll find here before you. 
And the oftener you come here the more I'll adore you ! 
Light is my heart since the day we were plighted ; 
Red is my cheek that they told me was blighted ; 
The green of the trees looks far greener than ever; 
And the linnets are singing — True lovers don't sever ! 



198 WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. 

I'll pull you sweet flowers to wear, if you choose 'em ; 
Or, after you've kissed them, they'll lie on my bosom ; 
I'll fetch from the mountain its breeze to inspire you ; 
I'll fetch from my fancy a tale that won't tire you. 
O ! your step's like the rain to the summer-vex'd farmer, 
Or sabre and shield to a knight without armour ! 
I'll sing you sweet songs till the stars rise above me ; 
Then wandering I'll wish you in silence to love me. 

We'll look through the trees at the cliff and the eyrie ; 
We'll tread round the rath on the track of the fairy ; 
We'll look on the stars, and we'll list to the river. 
Till you ask of your darling what gift you can give her. 
O ! she'll whisper you — " Love, as unchangeably beaming, 
And trust when in secret most tunefully streaming : 
Till the star-light of heaven above us shall quiver, 
As our souls flow in one down Eternity's river." 

So come in the evening, or come in the morning, — 
Come when you're look'd for, or come without warning, — 
Kisses and welcome you'll find here before you ; 
And the oftener you come here the more I'll adore you ! 
Light is my heart since the day we were plighted ; 
Red is my cheek that they told me was blighted ; 
The green of the trees looks far greener than ever ; 
And the linnets are singing — True lovers don't sever ! 

WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. 



THE NORMS WATERING YGGDRASILL. 

Within the unchanging twilight 
Of the high land of the Gods 

Between the murmuring fountain 
And the Ash-tree, tree of trees. 

The Norns, the terrible Maidens, 
Forevermore come and s:o. 



WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. 1 99 

Yggdrasill, the populous Ash-tree 
Whose leaves embroider heaven, 

Fills all the grey air with music : 
To Gods and to men sweet sounds, 

But speech to the fine-ear'd Maidens 
Who evermore come and go. 

That way to their domestead thrones 

The ^sir ride each day. 
And every one bends to the saddle 

As they pass beneath the shade : 
Even Odin, the strong All-Father, 
Bends to the beautiful Maidens 

Who cease not to come and go. 

The tempest crosses the high boughs. 

The great snakes heave below. 
The wolf, the boar, and antler'd harts 

Delve at the life-giving roots ; 
But all of them fear the wise Maidens, 
The wise-hearted Water-bearers 

Who evermore come and go. 

And men far away, in the night hours 
To the North-wind listening, hear, — 

They hear the howl of the were-wolf, 
And know he hath felt the sting 

Of the eyes of the potent Maidens 
Who sleeplessly come and go. 

They hear on the wings of the North-wind 

A sound as of three that sing ; 
And the skald, in the blae mist wandering 

High on the midland fell. 
Heard the very words of the o'ersong 

Of the Norns, who come and go. 

But alas for the ears of mortals 

Chance-hearing that fate-laden song ! 



200 WILLIAM BELL SCOTT. \ 

The bones of the skald lie there still : j 

For the speech of the leaves of the Tree < 

Is the song of the three Queen-Maidens 

Who evermore come and go. ; 

PARTING AND MEETING AGAIN. \ 



Last time I parted from my Dear 
The linnet sang from the briar-bush, 

The throstle from the dell ; 
The stream too carol'd full and clear, 
It was the spring-time of the year, 
And both the linnet and the thrush 

I love them well 
Since last I parted from my Dear. 

But when he came again to me 
The barley rustled high and low, 
Linnet and thrush were still ; 
Yellow'd the apple on the tree, 
'Twas autumn merry as it could be, 
What time the white ships come and go 

Under the hill ; 
They brought him back again to me. 
Brought him safely o'er the sea. 

PYGMALION. 

" Mistress of Gods and men ! I have been thine 
From boy to man, and many a myrtle rod 
Have I made grow upon thy sacred sod, 
Nor ever have I pass'd thy white shafts nine 
Without some votive offering for the shrine. 
Carved beryl or chased bloodstone ; — aid me now! 
And I will live to fashion for thy brow 
Heart-breaking priceless things : O, make her mine." 
Venus inclined her ear, and through the Stone 
Forthwith slid warmth like spring through sapling-stems, 



WILLIAM JAMES LINTON. 20I 

And lo ! the eyelid stirr'd, beneath had grown 
The tremulous light of life, and all the hems 

Of her zoned peplos shook Upon his breast 

She sank, by two dread gifts at once oppress'd. 



ROSE- LEA VES. 

Once a rose ever a rose, we say : 
One we loved and who loved us 
Remains beloved though gone from day 
To human hearts it must be thus, 
The past is sweetly laid away. 

Sere and seal'd for a day and year, 
Smell them, dear Christina ! pray : 
So Nature treats its children dear, 
So memory deals with yesterday : 
The past is sweetly laid away. 



WILLIAM JAMES LINTON. 
1812— 



BRIDAL SONG. 

Blessed Hours ! approach her gently ; 
Peace ! smile on her excellently ; 
Midnight Stars ! attend her pleasure : 

Veil thy splendour. Night ! 
Not even Love's own eyes should measure 

Love's delight. 

Touch life's chords with lightest finger ; 
Echoes sweet ! around her linger ; 
By the love makes marriage holy, 

Tame thy carriage, Fate ! 
Like a bridesmaid murmuring lowly — 

Yet we wait ! 



202 WILLIAM JAMES LINTON. 



THE HAPPY LAND. 

The Happy Land ! 

Studded with cheerful homesteads, fair to see, 
With garden grace and household symmetry : 
How grand the wide-brow'd peasant's lordly mien, 
The matron's smile serene ! 

O happy, happy land ! 

The happy land ! 

Half-hid in the dewy grass the mower blithe 
Sings to the day-star as he whets his scythe ; 
And to his babes at eventide again 
Carols as blithe a strain. 

O happy, happy land I 

The happy land ! 

Where in the golden sheen of autumn eves 

The bright-hair'd children play among the sheaves 

Or gather ripest apples all the day. 

As ruddy-cheek'd as they. 

O happy, happy land ! 

O happy land ! 

The thin smoke curleth through the frosty air ; 

The light smiles from the windows ; hearken there 

To the white grandsire's tale of heroes old, 

To flame-eyed listeners told ! 

O happy, happy land ! 

O happy, happy land ! 
The tender-foliaged alders scarcely shade 
Yon loitering lover and glad blushing maid : 
O happy land ! the Spring that quickens thee 
Is human liberty. 

O happy, happy land ! 



AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE. 203 



I PHI GENE I A AT AULTS. 

I am Achilles. Thou wast hither brought 

To be my wife, not for a sacrifice. 
Greece and her kings may stand aside as nought 

To what Thou art in my expectant eyes. 

Or kings or Gods : I too am heaven-born. 

I trample on their auguries and needs. 
Where the foreboding dares to front my scorn 

Or break the promise from my heart proceeds ? 

But thou Beloved ! smilest down my wrath 
So able to protect thee. Who should harm 

Achilles' Bride ? — Thou pointest to the path 
Of sacrifice, yet leaning on my arm. 

There is no need of words ; from me reply 
As little requisite : Thy lightest hand 

Guideth me, as the helm the ship ; Thine eye 
Doth more than all the Atridae could command. 

Thou givest life and love for Greece and Right : 
I will stand by thee lest thou shouldst be weak — 

Not weak of soul. — I will but hold in sight 

Thy marvelous beauty. — Here is She you seek ! 



AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE. 
1814— 



SONG. 

Seek not the tree of silkiest bark 

And balmiest bud, 
To carve her name while yet 'tis dark 

Upon the wood ! 
The world is full of noble tasks 

And wreaths hard won : 



204 AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE. 

Each work demands strong hearts, strong hands, 
Till day is done. 

Sing not that violet-veined skin, 

That cheek's pale roses, 
The lily of that form wherein 
Her soul reposes ! 
Forth to the fight, true man ! true knight ! 

The clash of arms 
Shall more prevail than whisper'd tale, 
To win her charms. 

The warrior for the True, the Right, 

Fights in Love's name ; 
The love that lures thee from that fight 

Lures thee to shame : 
That love which lifts the heart, yet leaves 

The spirit free, — 
That love, or none, is fit for one 

Man-shaped like thee. 



SORROW. 

When I was young, I said to Sorrow 

" Come, and I will play with thee ! ' 

He is near me now all day. 

And at night returns to say 

I will come again to-morrow — 

I will come and stay with thee.'* 

Through the woods we walk together, - 
His soft footsteps rustle by me : 
To shield an unregarded head 
He hath built a winter shed ; 
And all night in rainy weather 

I hear his gentle breathings by me. 



AUBREY THOMAS DE VERE. 20$ 



SONG. 

Love laid down his golden head 

On his mother's knee : 
The world runs round so fast " — he said, 

" None has time for me." 

Thought, a sage unhonor'd, turn'd 
From the on-rushing crew ; 

Song her starry legend spurn'd ; 
Art her glass down threw. 

Roll on, blind world ! upon thy track 
Until thy wheels catch fire : 

For that is gone which comes not back 
To seller nor to buyer. 



SONG. 

Softly, O midnight Hours ! 

Move softly o'er the bowers 
Where lies in happy sleep a Girl so fair : 

For ye have power, men say, 

Our hearts in sleep to sway 
And cage cold fancies in a moonlight snare. 

Round ivory neck and arm 

Enclasp a separate charm : 
Hang o'er her poised ; but breathe nor sigh nor prayer ! 

Silently ye may smile. 

But hold your breath the while 
And let the wind sweep back your cloudy hair ! 

Bend down your glittering urns 
(Ere yet the dawn returns) 
And star with dew the lawn her feet shall tread ; 
Upon the air rain balm ; 
Bid all the woods be calm : 



206 THOMAS BURBIDGE. 

Ambrosial dreams with healthful slumbers wed ! 

That so the Maiden may 

With smiles your care repay 
When from her couch she lifts her golden head, 

Waking with earliest birds 

Ere yet the misty herds 
Leave warm 'mid the grey grass their dusky bed. 



NOTHING MORE, 

A sigh in the morning grey, — 

And a solitary tear, 
Slow to gather, slow to fall, — 
And a painful flush of shame 
At the mention of thy name : 

This is little, this is all. 
False One ! that remains to say 
That thy love of old was here. 
That thy love hath pass'd away. 



THOMAS BURBIDGE. 

1816— 



LOVE'S INSISTENCE. 

If I desire with pleasant songs 
To throw a merry hour away. 

Comes Love unto me, and my wrongs 
In careful tale he doth display ; 

And asks me how I stand for singing 

While I my helpless hands am wringing 

And then, another time, if I 

A noon in shady bower would pass, 

Comes he with stealthy gestures sly 
And, flinging down upon the grass, 



CHARLES GEORGE ROSENBERG. 20/ 

Quoth he to me — ^' My Master dear ! 
Think of this noontide such a year." 

And if elsewhile I lay my head 

On pillow, with intent to sleep, 
Lies Love beside me on the bed 

And gives me ancient words to keep : 
Says he — '^ These looks, these tokens number ! 
May be they'll help you to a slumber." 

So every time when I would yield 

An hour to quiet, comes he still, 
And hunts up every sign conceal'd 

And every outward sign of ill ; 
And gives me his sad face's pleasures 
For Merriment's or Sleep's or Leisure's 

CHARLES GEORGE ROSENBERG. 

1815— 1876. 



THE WINGED HORSE. 

Wake from your homes in tomb and shroud ! 

Wake, Splendours of the Past t 

Joy divine, and Passion proud, 

Hope sublime, and Vision vast ! 

Let our love your glories trace 

Eye to eye and face to face ; 

Let our arms your beauties bind : — 
Or are ye like the wind 
To sight impalpable, too thin for our embrace ? 

Fire and water have we bound 

To the car and to the wheel 
With harness and with trace of steel ; 
A living speech and utterance found 

For the very lightning's speed : 
Every element compell'd 



208 CHARLES GEORGE ROSENBERG. 

To our luxury or need ; 
And with a certain prophecy 
Learn'd to count the courses held 

By the chance -worlds that whirl on high, 

The nightmares of a dreaming sky. 

Surely it were an easy task 
After this to bend and yoke 
The mighty Thought of ages past, 
The Horse our younger fathers broke : 
The wondrous Steed 
Whose wind-wing'd speed 
Treads on the hill-top and the cloud, — 
The glorious Horse 
Whose sun-paved course 
The young Greek and Roman bow'd, — 
The Steed whose mane, 
Like golden rain, 
A glory round the Italian shed 
On the great road through Hell and Heaven 
His restless will alone might tread, — 
The Horse with living music shod 
To the one bard of England given, 
By whom, as by a guiding God, 
His tramp of melody was driven 
Through every deep and hidden part 
Of that strange thing the human heart. 

And yet the Song is still, 

And on the cloud and hill 
Does the strong Steed unbitted stray ; 

The wave and air we tame, 

Harness the wind and flame, — 
Uncurb'd and free his glories play. 
None the Wing'd One's speed may yoke, — 

Lost the bit, the bridle broke, — 
Unknown the might, unseen the way. 



CHARLES GEORGE ROSENBERG. 209 

He alone may mount the Steed 
To whom the ancient spell is known ; 
He its magic letters read 
Who has the Will, and he alone : 
And the Will our souls have sold 
For the love of steel and gold, — 
Sold the mighty for the mean, 
Truck'd the priceless for the vile, 
Barter'd for the foul the clean ; 
And, instead of weeping, smile. 

In the name of Truth alone 

Might the ancient rider feel 
The strength to curb the heavenly Steed : 
A very child would scarcely need 

Scourge in hand or spur on heel 

If that little word were known ; 
But giant brawn and Titan force — 

Strength of muscle and of mind — 

Human wit and might combined, 

Were those letters five unread, 

111 upon the task were sped 
To mount and curb the glorious Horse. 

Earth is old, but then was young : 
They were children. We are men : 

Youth's great hymn of faith is sung : 
Clay which counts could worship then. 

Give us a God — a living God, 

One to wake the sleeping soul. 
One to cleanse the tainted blood 

Whose pulses in our bosoms roll : 
A vigorous faith's refreshing breath, 

To make us hunger for the True, — 

A faith to quicken and renew 
The nightmare of our Life-in-Death ! 
II.— 14 



2IO HENRY S. SUTTON. 

Come it how or whence it may, 
That Faith divine, that earnest Will, — 

This alone may teach the way 
To curb and bit the Wing'd One still. 
Truth and Faith are ever wed, — 
Faith alone the cloud may tread 
And look unblinded on the Sun. 
This was the magic of the Dead : 
They had a faith, — and we have none. 

HENRY SEPTIMUS SUTTON. 
1825— 



i 

THE BATTLE OF GOD. \ 

t 

So strive, so rule, Almighty Lord of All ! ] 

So greatly win thy planet-victory ! ' 

So gloriously what baffles bring in thrall ! \ 

So strongly work. Earth's final jubilee ; 

With gladness and with singing to instal ! \ 

And man may work with the great God : yea, ours 
This privilege, — all others how beyond ! 

To tend the great Man-root until it flowers ; | 

To scorn with godly laughter when Despond ■ 

Tamely before a hoary hindrance cowers ; i 

Effectually the planet to subdue, ''. 

And break old savagehood in claw and tusk ; 1 

That noble end to trust in and pursue \ 
Which under Nature's half-expressive husk 

Lies ever from the base conceal'd from view; j 

To draw our fellows up, as with a cord I 

Of love, unto their high-appointed place, ] 

Till, from our state barbaric and abhorr'd, i 

We do arise unto a royal race : t 

To be the blest companions of The Lord. '; 



ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 211 

CHARLES WELDON. 

i8— 1856 ? 



THE POEM OF THE UNIVERSE. 

The Poem of the Universe 
Nor rhythm has nor rhyme ; 

Some God recites the wondrous song 
A stanza at a time. 

Great deeds is he foredoom'd to do — 
With Freedom's flag unfurl'd — 

Who hears the echo of that song 
As it goes down the world. 

Great words he is compell'd to speak 
Who understands the song : 

He rises up hke fifty men, 
Fifty good men and strong. 

A stanza for each century : — 
Now heed it, all who can ! 

Who hears it, he, and only he, 
Is the elected man. 

ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. 
1819— 1861. 



PESCHIERA. 

What voice did on my spirit fall, 
Peschiera ! when thy bridge I cross'd ? 
'Tis better to have fought and lost 
Than never to have fought at all ! " 

The tricolour — a trampled rag 
Lies, dirt and dust ; the lines I track 
By sentry boxes, yellow-black, 
Lead up to no Italian flag. 



212 ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH, 

I see the Croat soldier stand 
Upon the grass of your redoubts ; 
The eagle with his black wings flouts 
The breadth and beauty of your land. 

Yet not in vain, although in vain, 
O men of Brescia ! on the day 
Of loss past hope I heard you say 
Your welcome to the noble pain. 

You smd — '' Since so it is, good-bye, 
Sweet life ! high hope ! but whatsoe'er 
May be, or must, no tongue shall dare 
To tell— the Lombard fear'd to die." 

You said (there shall be answer fit !) — 
*' And if our children must obey, 

They must ; but thinking on this day 
'Twill less debase them to submit." 

You said (O not in vain you said) — 
*' Haste, brothers! haste, while yet we may, 
The hours ebb fast of this one day 
When blood may yet be nobly shed." 

Ah ! not for idle hatred, not 
For honour, fame, nor self-applause, 
But for the glory of the Cause 
You did what will not be forgot. 

And though the stranger stand, 'tis true, — 
By force and fortune's right he stands : 
By fortune, which is in God's hands ; 
And strength, which yet shall spring in you. 

This voice did on my spirit fall, 
Peschiera ! when thy bridge I cross'd : 
'Tis better to have fought and lost 
Than never to have fought at all. 



i 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 213 



NOT UNAVAILING. 

Say not, the struggle nought availeth, 
The labour and the wounds are vain, 

The enemy faints not, nor faileth, 
And as things have been they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 

It may be, in yon smoke conceal'd, 
Your comrades chase even now the fliers 

And, but for you, possess the field. 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. 
Seem here no painful inch to gain, 

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

And not by Eastern windows only, 

When daylight comes, comes in the light ; 

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly ! 
But Westward, look ! the land is bright. 



JULIA WARD HOWE. 
1819— 



BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. 

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord : 

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are 

stored ; 
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword ; 
His truth is marching on. 

Glory ! glory ! hallelujah ! his truth is marching on. 

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps ; 
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and 
damps ; 



214 WALT WHITMAN. 

I can read his righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps ; 
His day is marching on. 

Glory ! glory ! hallelujah ! his day is marching on. 

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish'd rows of steel : 

As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall 

deal : 
Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel ! 
Since God is marching on. 

G]ory ! glory ! hallelujah ! since God is marching on. 

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call re- 
treat ; 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before his judgment seat : 
O, be swift, my soul ! to answer Him ; be jubilant, my feet ! 
Our God is marching on. 

Glory ! glory ! hallelujah ! our God is marching on. 

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born, across the sea, 
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me : 
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free ! 
While God is marching on. 

Glory ! glory ! hallelujah ! while God is marching on. 



WALT WHITMAN. 

1819— 



PIONEERS. 



Come, my tan-faced children ! 
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready ! 
Have you your pistols ? have you your sharp-edged axes ? 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

For we can not tarry here ; 
We must march, my darlings ! we must bear the brunt of 
danger : 



WALT WHITMAN. 21$ 

We, the youthful sinewy races, — all the rest on us depend. 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

O you youths, Western youths ! 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship : 
Plain I see you, Western youths ! see you tramping with the 
foremost, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Have the elder races halted ? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied, over there be- 
yond the seas ; 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden, and the lesson. 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

All the past we leave behind : 
We debouch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world : 
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labour and the 
march, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

We detachments steady throwing, 
Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountains steep, 
Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go the unknown 
ways. 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

We primeval forests felling, 
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and piercing deep the 

mines within, 
We the surface broad surveying, and the virgin soil upheaving, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! » 

Colorado men are we : 
From the peaks gigantic, from the great sierras and the high 
plateaus, 



2l6 WALT WHITMAN. 

From the mine and from the gully, from the hunting trail, we 
come, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

From Nebraska, from Arkansas, 
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, with the continental 

blood intervein'd, 
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the Southern, all the 
Northern, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

O resistless, restless race ! 
O beloved race in all ! O my breast aches with tender love for 

all! 
O I mourn and yet exult — I am rapt with love for all. 
Pioneers ! O pioneers! 

Raise the mighty Mother Mistress ! 
Waving high the delicate Mistress, over all, the starry Mis- 
tress ! — bend your heads all ! 
Raise the fang'd and warlike Mistress, stern, impassive, wea- 
pon'd Mistress ! 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

See my children, resolute children ! 
By those swarms upon our rear, we must never yield or falter. 
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there behind us urging, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

On and on, the compact ranks, 
With accessions ever waiting, with the places of the dead 

quickly fill'd, — 
Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stop- 
ping, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 



O to die advancing on ! \ 

Are there some of us to droop and die ? has the hour come ? ; 



WALT WHITMAN. 21/ 

Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and sure the gap is 
fill'd, 

Pioneers ! pioneers! 

All the pulses of the world, 
Falling in, they beat for us, with the Western movement beat. 
Holding single or together, steady moving, to the front, all for us, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Life's involved and varied pageants, 
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at their work. 
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the masters with their 
slaves. 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

All the hapless silent lovers. 
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the righteous, and the 

wicked, 
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the living, all the dying. 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

I too with my soul and body, 
We a curious trio, picking, wandering on our way. 
Through these shores, amid the shadows, with the apparitions 
pressing. 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Lo ! the darting bowling orb, 
Lo ! the brother orbs around, all the clustering suns and 

planets. 
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights with dreams, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

These are of us, they are with us, 
All for primal needed work, while the followers there in em- 
bryo wait behind, 
We to-day's procession heading, we the route for travel clear- 
ing. 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 



2l8 WALT WHITMAN. 

O you daughters of the West ! 
O you young and elder daughters ! O you mothers and you 

wives ! 
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united, 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Minstrels latent on the prairies ! 
(Shrouded bards of other lands ! you may sleep — you have 

done your work) 
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you rise and tramp 
amid us, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Not for delectations sweet. 
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the peaceful and the 

studious. 
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us the tame enjoyment. 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Do the feasters gluttonous feast. 
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep, have they lock'd and bolted 

doors, — 
Still be ours the diet hard and the blanket on the ground ! 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Has the night descended ? 
Was the road of late so toilsome ? did we stop, discouraged, 

nodding on our way ? 
Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause ob- 
livious, 

Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 

Till with sound of trumpet. 
Far, far off the day-break call ! Hark ! how loud and clear I 

hear it wind. 
Swift ! to the head of the army ! swift ! spring to your places ! 
Pioneers ! O pioneers ! 



WALT WHITMAN. 2ig 



THE SOLDIER'S LETTER. 
I. 

Come up from the fields, Father! here's a letter from our 

Pete ; 
And come to the front door, Mother ! here's a letter from thy 

dear son. 



Lo ! tis Autumn : 

Lo ! where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder, 

Cool and sweeten Ohio's villages, with leaves fluttering in the 

moderate wind ; 
Where apples ripe in the orchards hang, and grapes on the 

trellis'd vines ! 
(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines ? 
Smell you the buckwheat, where the bees were lately buzzing ?) 

Above all, lo ! the sky, so calm, so transparent after the rain, 
and with wondrous clouds ; 

Below too all calm, all vital and beautiful, — and the farm pros- 
pers well. 

3- 

Down in the fields all prospers well : 

But now from the fields come, Father! come at the daughter's, 

call ; 
And come to the entry. Mother ! to the front door come, right 

away. 

Fast as she can she hurries — something ominous — her steps 

trembling ; 
She does not tarry to smooth her hair, nor adjust her cap. 

Open the envelope quickly ! 

O, this is not our son's writing, yet his name is sign'd ; 



220 WALT WHITMAN. 

O, a strange hand writes for our dear son — O stricken Mother's 

soul ! 
All swims before her eyes — flashes with black — she catches the 

main words only ; 
Sentences broken, — " gun-shot wound in the breast, cavalry 

skirmish, taken to the hospital, 
At present low, but will soon be better." 



4. 
Ah! now the single figure to me, 

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms, 
Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint, 
By the jamb of a door leans. 

"Grieve not so, dear Mother!" The just grown daughter 

speaks through her sobs ; 
The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay'd : 
*' See, dearest Mother! the letter says Pete will soon be 

better." 

5. 

Alas, poor boy ! he will never be better (nor may-be needs to 

be better, that brave and simple soul). 
While they stand at home at the door, he is dead already. 
The onl}^ son is dead. 

But the Mother needs to be better, — 

She, with thin form, presently dress'd in black ; 

By day her meals untouch'd, — then at night fitfully sleeping, 
often waking. 

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep long- 
ing— 

O that she might withdraw unnoticed — silent from life escape 
and withdraw. 

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son ! 



THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 221 

THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 

1819— 



DIRGE. 



What shall we do now, Mary being dead, 
Or say, or write, that shall express the half? 
What can we do but pillow that fair head. 
And let the Spring-time write her epitaph ? 

As it will soon, in snow-drop, violet, 
Wind-flower, and columbine, and maiden's tear 
Each letter of that pretty alphabet 
That spells in flowers the pageant of the year. 

She was a maiden for a man to love, 
She was a woman for a husband's life, 
One that had learn'd to value far above 
The name of Love the sacred name of Wife. 

Her little life -dream, rounded so with sleep, 
Had all there is of life — except grey hairs : 
Hope, love, trust, passion, and devotion deep, 
And that mysterious tie a Mother bears. 

She hath fulfill'd her promise and hath pass'd. 
Set her down gently at the iron door ! 
Eyes ! look on that loved image for the last : 
Now cover it in earth — her earth no more ! 

SAINT PER AY. 

When to any saint I pray, 
It shall be to Saint Peray. 
He alone, of all the brood, 
Ever did m.e any good : 
Many I have tried that are 
Humbugs in the calendar. 



222 THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 

On the Atlantic, faint and sick, 
Once I pray'd Saint Dominick : 
He was holy (sure), and wise ; — 
Was't not he that did devise 
Auto-da-fes and rosaries ? 
But for one in my condition 
This good saint was no physician. 

Next, in pleasant Normandie, 

I made a prayer to Saint Denis, 

In the great cathedral where 

All the ancient kings repose ; 

But how I was swindled there 

At the ^' Golden Fleece," — he knows ! 

In my wanderings vague and various 
Reaching Naples, — as I lay 
Watching Vesuvius from the bay, 
I besought Saint Januarius. 
But I was a fool to try him, — 
Nought I said could liquefy him ; 
And I swear he did me wrong, 
Keeping me shut up so long 
In that pest-house, with obscene 
Jews and Greeks and things unclean : 
What need had I of quarantine ? 

In Sicily at least a score, 
In Spain about as many more, 
And in Rome almost as many 
As the loves of Don Giovanni, 
Did I pray to — sans reply : 
Devil take the tribe ! said I. 

Worn with travel, tired and lame. 
To Assissi's walls I came : 
Sad, and full of home-sick fancies, 
I address'd me to Saint Francis : 



THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 223 

But the beggar never did 
Anything as he was bid, 
Never gave me aught — but fleas : 
Plenty had I at Assisse. 

But in Provence, near Vaucluse, 
Hard by the Rhone, I found a Saint 
Gifted with a wondrous juice 
Potent for the worst complaint ! 
'Twas at Avignon that first, 
In the witching time of thirst. 
To my brain the knowledge came 
Of this blessed Catholic's name, 
Forty miles of dust that day 
Made me welcome Saint Peray. 

Though till then I had not heard 
Aught about him, ere a third 
Of a litre pass'd my lips, 
All saints else were in eclipse : 
For his gentle spirit glided 
With such magic into mine 
That methought such bliss as I did 
Poet never drew from wine. 

Rest he gave me, and refection, 
Chasten'd hopes, calm retrospection, 
Softened images of sorrow. 
Bright forebodings for the morrow, 
Charity for what is pass'd. 
Faith in something good at last. 

Now, why should any almanack 
The name of this good creature lack ? 
Or wherefore should the breviary 
Omit a Saint so sage and merry ? 
The Pope himself should grant a day 



224 CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

Especially to Saint Peray. 
But, since no day hath been appointed 
On purpose by the Lord's Anointed, 
Let us not wait ! We'll do him right. 
Send round your bottles, Hal ! and set your night ! 



CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

1819— 1875. 



TO THE NORTH-EAST WIND. 

Welcome, wild North-Easter ! 

Shame it is to see 
Odes to every Zephyr, 

Ne'er a verse to thee. 
Welcome, black North-Easter ! 

O'er the German foam, 
O'er the Danish moorlands, 

From thy frozen home. 
Tired we are of Summer, 

Tired of gaudy glare. 
Showers soft and steaming, 

Hot and breathless air ; 
Tired of listless dreaming 

Through the lazy day : 
Jovial Wind of Winter ! 

Turn us out to play ! 
Sweep the golden reed-beds ! 

Crisp the lazy dyke ! 
Hunger into madness 

Every plunging pike ! 
Fill the lake with wild fowl ! 

Fill the marsh vv'ith snipe. 
While on dreary moorlands 

Lonely curlew pipe ! 
Through the black fir-forest 



CHARLES KINGSLEY. 22$ 

Thunder harsh and dry, 
Shattering down the snow-flakes 

Off the curdled sky ! 
Hark! the brave North-Easter ! 

Breast-high hes the scent : 
On, by holt and headland, 

Over heath and bent ! 
Chime, ye dappled darlings ! 

Through the sleet and snow : 
Who can over-ride you ? 

Let the horses go ! 
Chime, ye dappled darlings ! 

Down the roaring blast : 
You shall see a fox die 

Ere an hour be pass'd. 
Go ! and rest to-morrow, 

Hunting in your dreams. 
While our skates are ringing 

O'er the frozen streams. 
Let the luscious South-Wind 

Breathe in lover's sighs, 
While the lazy gallants 

Bask in ladies' eyes ! 
What does he but soften 

Heart alike and pen ? 
'Tis the hard grey weather 

Breeds hard Englishmen. 
What's the soft South-Wester? 

'Tis the ladies' breeze. 
Bringing home their true loves 

Out of all the seas. 
But the black North-Easte^, 

Through the snow-storm hurl'd. 
Drives our English hearts of oak 

Seaward, round the world. 
Come ! as came our fathers, 

Heralded by thee, 
II.-15 



226 CHARLES KINGSLEY. ! 

Conquering, from the East-ward, j 

Lords by land and sea. j 

Come ! and strong within us | 

Stir the Vikings' blood, J 

Bracing brain and sinew ! 

Blow ! thou Wind of God ! ;; 

1 

THE SANDS OF DEE, I 

" O ?»Iary ! go and call the cattle home, — 

And call the cattle home, - 
And call the cattle home 

Across the sands of Dee I " i 

The Western wind was wild and dank with foam, ! 
And all alone went she. 

The creeping tide came up along the sand, •; 

And o'er and o'er the sand, ' 

And round and round the sand, ' 
As far as eye could see ; 

The blinding mist came down and hid the land ; 

And never home came she. i 

j 

'' O, is it weed or fish or floating hair, j 

A tress of golden hair, | 

A drowned maiden's hair, \ 

Above the nets, at sea ? j 

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair ! 

Among the stakes on Dee." / 

They row'd her in across the rolling foam, j 

The cruel crawling foam, | 

The cruel hungry foam, '\ 
To her grave beside the sea : 

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home \ 

Across the sands of Dee. 1 



MARY ANN EVANS LEWIS. 22/ 

A HOPE. 

Twins stars, aloft in ether clear, 

Around each other roll alway, 
Within one common atmosphere 

Of their own mutual light and day. 

And myriad happy eyes are bent 
Upon their changeless love alway : 

As, strengthen'd by their one intent, 
They pour the flood of life and day. 

So we through this world's waning night 
May, hand in hand, pursue our way ; 

Shed round us order, love, and light, 
And shine unto the perfect day. 

MARY ANN EVANS LEWES. 

" GEORGE ELIOT." 

1 8 19— 1880, 



THE DARK, 

Should I long that dark were fair ? 

Say, O Song ! 
Lacks my Love aught that I should long ? 

Dark the Night, with breath all flowers. 
And tender broken voice that fills 
With ravishment the listening hours, — 

Whisperings, wooings. 
Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings 
In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills ! 
Dark the Night : yet is she bright. 
For in her dark she brings the mystic star, 
Trembling yet strong as is the voice of love, 

From some unknown afar. 
O radiant Dark ! O darkly foster'd Ray ! 
Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
1819— 



HEBE. 

I saw the twinkle of white feet, 

I saw the flash of robes descending, — 

Before her ran an influence fleet 

That bow'd my heart, Hke barley bending. 

As in bare fields the searching bees 
Pilot to blooms beyond our finding, 
It led me on, — by sweet degrees, 
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. 

Those .Graces were that seem'd grim Fates ; 
With nearer love the sky lean'd o'er me ; 
The long-sought secret's golden gates 
On musical hinges swung before me. 

I saw the brimm'd bowl in her grasp, 
Thrilling with godhood ; like a lover, 
I sprang the proffer'd life to clasp : 
The beaker fell, the luck was over. 

The earth has drunk the vintage up : 
What boots it patch the goblet's splinters ? 
Can Summer fill the icy cup 
Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's ? 

O spendthrift Haste ! Await the Gods ! 
Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience. 
Haste scatters on unthankful sods 
The immortal gift in vain libations. 

Coy Hebe flies from those that woo. 
And shuns the hands would seize upon her; 
Follow thy life, and she will sue 
To pour for thee the cup of honour ! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 229 

THE COURT IN". 
God makes sech nights, all white an' still 

Fur'z you can look or listen, 
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill. 

All silence an' all glisten — 

Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 

An' peek'd in thru' the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone, 

'1th no one nigh to hender. 

A fire-place fill'd the room's one side 

With half a cord o' wood in, — 
There warn't no stoves (tell comfort died) 

To bake ye to a puddin'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 

Towards the Pootiest, bless her ! 
An' leetle flames danced all about 

The chiny on the dresser. 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted, 
The ole queen's-arm that gran'ther Young 

Fetch'd back from Concord busted. 

The very room, coz she was in, 

Seem'd warm from floor to ceilin', 
An' she lopk'd full ez rosy agin 

Ez the apples she was peelin'. 

'Twas kin' o' kingdom-come to look 

On sech a blessed cretur : 
A dog-rose blushin' to a brook 

Ain't modester nor sweeter. 

He was six foot o' man, A i. 

Clean grit an' human natur' ; 
None couldn't quicker pitch a ton. 

Nor dror a furrer straighten 



230 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

He'd spark'd it with full twenty gals, 

He'd squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, 

Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells : 
All is, he couldn't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould run 

All crinkly, like curl'd maple ; 
The side she bresh'd felt full o' sun 

Ez a South slope in A'pil. 

She thought no v'ice hed such a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir ; 
My ! when he made Old Hundred ring. 

She know'd the Lord was nigher. 

An' she'd blush scarlit, right in prayer, 

When her new meetin'-bunnet 
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair 

O' blue eyes sot upon it. 

That night, I tell ye, she look'd some ! 

She seem'd to've gut a new soul, 
For she felt sartin-sure he'd come, 

Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heer'd a foot, an' know'd it tu, 

A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
All ways to once her feelins flew 

Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin' o' I'iter'd on the mat. 

Some doubtfle o' the sekle ; 
His heart kep' going pity-pat, 

But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 

Ez though she wish'd him furder. 
An' on her apples kep' to work, 

Parin' away like murder. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 23 1 

" You want to see my Pa, I s'pose ? " 

" Wal no 1 come dasignin' " 

" To see my Ma ? She's sprinklin' clo'es 
Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." 

To say why gals act so or so, 

Or don't, 'ould be presumin' ; 
Mebbe to mean Yes an' say No 

Comes nateral to women. 

He stood a spell on one fut fust. 

Then stood a spel] on t'other ; 
An' on which one he felt the wust 

He couldn't ha' told ye nuther. 

Says he — *' I'd better call agin ; " 
Says she—'' Think likely, Mister ! " 

That last word prick'd him like a pin, 
An' Wal, he up an' kist her. 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em slips, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes. 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

For she was jes' the quiet kind 

Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 

Snow-hid in Jenooary. 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued 

Too tight for all expressin', 
Tell mother see how matters stood. 

And gin em' both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 

Down to the Bay o' Fundy. 
An' all I know is they was cried 

In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 



232 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

THE FOUNTAIN. 
Into the sunshine, 

Full of the light, 
Leaping and flashing 

From morn till night, — 

Into the moonlight, 

Whiter than snow. 
Waving so flower-like 

When the winds blow, — 

Into the starlight 

Rushing in spray, 
Happy at midnight, 

Happy by day, — 

Ever in motion. 

Blithesome and cheery, 
Still climbing heavenward, 

Never aweary, — 

Glad of all weathers 

Still seeming best. 
Upward or downward, 

Motion thy rest, — 

Full of a nature 

Nothing can tame. 
Changed every moment, 

Ever the same, — 

Ceaseless aspiring, 

Ceaseless content. 
Darkness or sunshine 

Thy element, — 

Glorious Fountain ! 

Let my heart be 
Fresh, changeful, constant. 

Upward, like thee I 



MARIA WHITE LOWELL. 233 



SHE CAME AND WENT. 

As a twig trembles which a bird 

Lights on to sing, then leaves unbent, 

So is my memory thrill'd and stirr'd : 
I only know She came and went. 

As clasps some lake, by gusts unriven, 
The blue dome's measureless content, 

So my soul held that moment's heaven : 
I only know She came and went. 

As at one bound our swift Spring heaps 
The orchards full of bloom and scent, 

So clove her May my wintry sleeps : 
I only know She came and went. 

An angel stood and met my gaze 

Through the low doorway of my tent,— 

The tent is struck, the vision stays : 
I only know She came and went. 

O, when the room grows slowly dim, 
And life's last oil is nearly spent. 

One gush of light these eyes will brim. 
Only to think She came and went. 



MARIA WHITE LOWELL. 

1821—1853, 



AN OPIUM FANTASY. 

Soft hangs the opiate in the brain. 
And lulling soothes the edge of pain. 
Till harshest sound, far off or near. 
Sings floating in its mellow sphere. 



234 MARIA WHITE LOWELL. 

What wakes me from my heavy dream ? 

Or am I still asleep ? 
Those long and soft vibrations seem 

A slumbrous charm to keep. 

The graceful play, a- moment stopp'd, 

Distance again unrolls, 
Like silver balls that, softly dropp'd, 

Ring into golden bowls. 

I question of the poppies red, 

The fairy flaunting band, 
While I, a weed with drooping head 

Within their phalanx stand : 

*' Some airy one, with scarlet cap ! 
The name unfold to me 
Of this new minstrel who can lap 
Sleep in his melody ! " 

Bright grew their scarlet-kerchief'd heads, 
As freshening winds had blown, 

And from their gently-swaying beds 
They sang in undertone : — 

*' O, he is but a little Owl, 

The smallest of his kin, 
Who sits beneath the Midnight's cowl 
And makes this airy din." 

" Deceitful tongues of fiery tints ! 
Far more than this ye know : 
That he is your Enchanted Prince 
Doom'd as an Owl to go. 

*' Now his fond play for years hath stopp'd ; 
But nightly he unrolls 
His silver balls that, softly dropp'd, 
Ring into golden bowls." 



WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE. 235 

WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE. 

1820— 1881. 



EL AMIN—THE FAITHFUL. 

Who is this that comes from Hara ? not in kingly pomp and 

pride, 
But a great free Son of Nature, lion-soul'd and eagle-eyed : 

Who is this before whose presence idols tumble to the sod ? 
While he cries out — "Allah Akbar ! and there is no god but 
God ! " 

Wandering in the solemn desert, he has wonder'd, like a child 
Not as yet too proud to wonder, at the sun and star and wild. 

" O thou Moon ! who made thy brightness ? Stars ! who hung 

ye there on high ? 
Answer ! so my soul may worship : I must worship, or I die." 

Then there fell the brooding silence that precedes the thun- 
der's roll ; 
And the old Arabian Whirlwind call'd another Arab soul. 

Who is this that comes from Hara ? not in kingly pomp and 

pride, 
But a great free Son of Nature, lion-soul'd and eagle-eyed. 

He has stood and seen Mount Hara to the Awful Presence 

nod ; 
He has heard from cloud and lightning — " Know there is no 

god but God ! " 

Call ye this man an Impostor ? He was call'd The Faithful, 

when 
A boy he wander'd o'er the deserts, by the wild-eyed Arab men. 



236 WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE. 

He was always call'd The Faithful. Truth, he knew, was 

Allah's breath ; 
But the Lie went darkly gnashing through the corridors of 

Death. 

He " was fierce ! " Yes ! fierce at falsehood, fierce at hideous 

bits of wood 
That the Koreish taught the people made the sun and solitude. 

But his heart was also gentle ; and affection's graceful palm 
Waving in his tropic spirit to the weary brought a balm. 

*' Precepts ? " — Have on each compassion ! Lead the stranger 

to your door ! 
In your dealings keep up justice ! Give a tenth unto the poor ! 

*' Yet, ambitious ! " Yes ! ambitious, while he heard the calm 

and sweet 
Aidenn-voices sing, to trample conquer'd Hell beneath his 

feet. 

"Islam?" — Yes! submit to heaven !—'' Prophet ? "—To the 

East thou art. 
What are prophets but the trumpets blown by God to stir the 

heart ? 

And the great Heart of the Desert stirr'd unto that solemn 

strain 
Rolling from the trump at Hara over Error's troubled main. 

And a hundred dusky millions honour still El Amin's rod. 
Daily chanting — "Allah Akbar ! know there is no god but 
God ! " 

Call him then no more Impostor ! Mecca is the Choral Gate 
Where, till Zion's noon shall take them, nations in the morning 
wait. 



EBENEZER JONES. 23/ 

EBENEZER JONES. 

1820 — i860. 



RAIN. 

More than the wind, more than the snow, 
More than the sunshine, I love rain : 

Whether it droppeth soft and low, 
Whether it rusheth amain. 

Dark as the night it spreadeth its wings, 

Slow and silently, up on the hills ; 
Then sweeps o'er the vale, like a steed that springs 

From the grasp of a thousand wills. 

Swift sweeps under heaven the raven cloud's flight ; 

And the land and the lakes and the main 
Lie belted beneath with steel-bright light, 

The light of the swift-rushing rain. 

On evenings of summer, when sunlight is low. 
Soft the rain falls from opal-hued skies ; 

And the flowers the most delicate summer can show 
Are not stirr'd by its gentle surprise. 

It falls on the pools, and no wrinkling it makes, 
But touching melts in, like the smile 

That sinks in the face of a dreamer, but breaks 
Not the calm of his dream's happy wile. 

The grass rises up as it falls on the meads, 

The bird softlier sings in his bower. 
And the circles of gnats circle on like wing'd seeds 

Through the soft sunny lines of the shower. 

WHEN THE WORLD IS BURNING. 

When the world is burning, 
Fired within, yet turning 
Round with face unscathed ; 



^6' 



DENIS FLORENCE McCARTHY. 



Ere fierce flames, uprushing, 
O'er all lands leap, crushing, 

Till earth fall, fire -swathed, — 
Up, amidst the meadows, 
Gently through the shadow^s, 

Gentle flames will glide, 
Small and blue and golden : 
Though by bard beholden 
When in calm dreams folden, 

Calm his dreams will bide. 

Where the dance is sweeping. 
Through the greensward peeping, 

Shall the soft lights start ; 
Laughing maids, unstaying, 
Deeming it trick-playing, 
High their robes upswaying. 

O'er the lights shall dart ; 
And the woodland haunter 
Shall not cease to saunter 

When, far down some glade, 
Of the great world's burning 
One soft flame upturning 
Seems, to his discerning, 

Crocus in the shade. 



DENIS FLORENCE MCCARTHY. 
1820— 1881, 



SUMMER LONGINGS. 

Ah ! my heart is weary waiting. 

Waiting for the May : 
Waiting for the pleasant rambles 
Where the fragrant hawthorn brambles. 
With the woodbine alternating. 

Scent the dewy way ; 



DENIS FLORENCE McCARTHY. 239 

Ah ! my heart is weary, waiting, 
Waiting, for the May. 

Ah ! my heart is sick with longing, 

Longing for the May : 
Longing to escape from study. 
To the young face fair and ruddy, 
And the thousand charms belonging 

To the summer's day : 
Ah ! my heart is sick with longing. 

Longing for the May. 

Ah ! my heart is sore with sighing, 

Sighing for the May : 
Sighing for their sure returning 
When the summer beams are burning, — 
Hopes and flowers that dead or dying 

All the winter lay : 
Ah ! my heart is sore with sighing, 

Sighing for the May. 

Ah ! my heart is pain'd with throbbing, 

Throbbing for the May : 
Throbbing for the seaside billows 
Or the water-wooing willows 
Where in laughing and in sobbing 

Glide the streams away : 
Ah ! my heart, my heart is throbbing. 

Throbbing for the May. 

Waiting, sad, dejected, weary, — 

Waiting for the May : 
Spring goes by with wasted warnings. 
Moonlit evenings, sun-bright mornings, — 
Summer comes, yet, dark and dreary, 

Life still ebbs away : 
Man is ever weary, weary, 

Waiting for the May. 



240 ALICE GARY. 

FREDERICK LOCKER. 

1821— 



THE UNREALIZED IDEAL. 

My only Love is always near, 

In country or in town : 
I see her twinkling feet, I hear 

The whisper of her gown. 

She foots it ever fair and young. 
Her locks are tied in haste, 

And one is o'er her shoulder flung 
And hangs below her waist. 

She ran before me in the meads, 
And down this world-worn track 

She leads me on ; but while she leads 
She never gazes back. 

And yet her voice is in my dreams, 
To witch me more and more : 

That wooing voice ! Ah me, it seems 
Less near me than of yore. 

Lightly I sped when hope was high 
And youth beguiled the chase, — 

I follow, follow still : but I 
Shall never see her face. 

ALICE CARY. 

1820 — 1871. 



L^ OPEN SECRETS, 

The truth lies round about us. 
All too closely to be sought : 

So open to our vision that 
'Tis hidden to our thought. 



PHCEBE GARY. 241 

We know not what the glories 
Of the grass, the flower, may be : 

We needs must struggle for the sight 
Of what we always see. ' 

Waiting for storms and whirlwinds, 

And to have a sign appear, 
We deem not God is speaking 

In the still small voice we hear. 

In reasoning proud, blind leaders 
Of the blind through life we go ; 

And do not know the things we see, 
Nor see the things we know. 

Single and indivisible. 

We pass from change to change, 
Familiar with the strangest things, 



We make the light through which we see 
The light, and make the dark : 

To hear the lark sing we must be 
At heaven's gate with the lark. 



PHCEBE GARY. 

1824 — 1871. 



THE MAIDEN'S SONG. 

Laugh out, O stream ! from your bed of green, 

Where you lie in the sun's embrace ; 
And talk to the reeds that o'er you lean 

To touch your dimpled face. 
But let your talk be sweet as it will, 

And your laughter be as gay. 
You can not laugh as I laugh in my heart, — 

For my Lover will come to-day. 
II.— 16 



PHCEBE GARY. 



Sing sweet, little bird ! sing out to your mate 

That hides in the leafy grove ; 
Sing clear, and tell him for him you wait, 

And tell him of all your love. 
But though you sing till you shake the buds 

And the tender leaves of May, 
My spirit thrills with a sweeter song, — 

For my Lover must come to-day. 

Come up, O winds ! come up from the South 

With eager hurrying feet, 
And kiss your red rose on her mouth 

In the bower where she blushes sweet. 
But you can not kiss your darling flower, 

Though you clasp her as you may, 
As I kiss in my thought the Lover dear 

I shall hold in my arms to-day. 

ALAS ! 
Since, if you stood by my side to-day, 

Only our hands could meet, 
What matter if half the weary world 

Lies out between our feet ? 

That I am here by the lonesome sea, 
You by the pleasant Rhine ? 

Our hearts were just as far apart 
If I held your hand in mine. 

Therefore, with never a backward glance, 

I leave the past behind ; 
And standing here by the sea alone 

I give it to the wind. 

I give it all to the cruel wind, 

And I have no word to say : 
Yet, alas to be as we have been, 

And to be as we are to-day i 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 243 



MATTHEW ARNOLD. 

1822 — 



PHILOMELA. 

Hark ! ah, the Nightingale ! 

The tawny-throated ! 

Hark ! from that moonlit cedar what a burst, 

What triumph ! — Hark ! what pain ! — 

O wanderer from a Grecian shore ! 

Still after many years, in distant lands, 

Still nourishing in thy bewilder'd brain 

That wild, unquench'd, deep-sunken, old-world pain. 

Say ! will it never heal ? 

And can this fragrant lawn. 

With its cool trees, and night, 

And the sweet tranquil Thames, 

And moonshine, and the dew. 

To thy rack'd heart and brain 

Afford no balm ? 

Dost thou to-night behold. 

Here, through the moonlight, on this English grass, 

The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild ? 

Dost thou again peruse 

With hot cheeks and sear'd eyes 

The too clear web, and thy dumb sister's shame? 

Dost thou once more essay 

Thy flight, and feel come over thee, 

Poor fugitive ! the feathery change 

Once more, and once more seem to make resound 

With love and hate, triumph and agony, 

Lone Daulis and the high Cephissian vale ? — 

Listen, Eugenia ! 
How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves ! 

Again — thou hearest ? 

Eternal passion ! 

Eternal Pain ! 



244 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 



GROWING OLD. 

What is it to grow old ? 

Is it to lose the glory of the form, 

The lustre of the eye ? 

Is it for Beauty to forego her wreath ? 

Yes ! but not this alone. 

Is it to feel our strength, 

Not our bloom only, but our strength decay? 

Is it to feel each limb 

Grow stiffer, every function less exact, 

Each nerve more weakly strung ? 

Yes ! this : and more ! but not, 

Ah ! 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be 

'Tis not to have our life 

Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow, 

A golden day's decline. 

'Tis not to see the world 

As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes 

And heart profoundly stirr'd ; 

And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, 

The years that are no more. 

It is to spend long days 

And not once feel that we were ever young ; 

It is to add, immured 

In the hot prison of the present, month 

To month with weary pain. 

It is to suffer this. 

And feel but half and feebly what we feel : 

Deep in our hidden heart 

Festers the dull remembrance of a change, 

But no emotion, — none. 



WILLIAM (JOHNSON) CORY. 245 

It is (last stage of all) 

When we are frozen up within, and quite 

The phantom of ourselves, 

To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost, 

Which blamed the living man. 



WILLIAM (JOHNSON) CORY. 

1823— 



MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH. 

You promise heavens free from strrfe, 
Pure truth, and perfect change of will ; 

But sweet, sweet is this human life, 
So sweet I fain would breathe it still : 

Your chilly stars I can forego ; 

This warm kind world is all I know. , 

You say there is no substance here. 

One great reality above : 
Back from that void I shrink in fear. 

And child-like hide myself in love. 
Show me what angels feel ! till then 
I cling, a mere weak man, to men. 

You bid me lift my mean desires 
From faltering lips and fitful veins 

To sexless souls, ideal choirs, 

Unwearied voices, wordless strains : 

My mind with fonder welcome owns 

One dear dead friend's remember'd tones. 

Forsooth the present we must give 
To that which can not pass away ; 

All beauteous things for which we live 
By laws of time and space decay : 

But O, the very reason why 

I clasp them is because they die. 



246 SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL. 

A FRENCH SAILOR'S SCOTTISH SWEETHEART. 
I can not forget my jo ; 

I bid him be mine in sleep : 
But battle and woe have changed him so, 
There's nothing to do but weep. 

My mother rebukes me yet, — 

And I never was meek before : 
His jacket is wet, his lip cold set, — 

He'll trouble our home no more. 

O, breaker of reeds that bend ! 

O, quencher of tow that smokes ! 
I'd rather descend to my sailor friend 

Than prosper with lofty folks. 

I'm lying beside the gowan, 

My jo in the English bay ; 
I'm Annie Rowan, his Annie Rowan, — 

He call'd me his Bien-Aimee. 

I'll hearken to all you quote. 

Though I'd rather be dead and free : 

The little he wrote in the sinking boat 
Is Bible and charm to me. 

SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL. 

1824 — 1874. 



A SLEEP SONG. 
Sister Simplicitie ! 
Sing, sing a song to me, — 

Sing me to sleep ! 
Some legend low and long, 
Slow as the summer song 

Of the dull Deep : 

Some legend long and low. 
Whose equal ebb and flow, 



SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL. 247 

To and fro, creep 
On the dim marge of grey, 
'Tween the soul's night and day, 
Washing ' ' awake " away 

Into "asleep" : 

Some legend low and long, 
Never so weak or strong 

As to let go 
While it can hold this heart 
Withouten sigh or smart, 
Or as to hold this heart 

When it sighs No : 

Some long low-swaying song 
As the sway'd shadow long 

Sways to and fro 
Where, through the crowing cocks, 
And by the swinging clocks, 
Some weary mother rocks 

Some weary woe. 

Sing up and down to me ! 
Like a dream-boat at sea. 

So, and still so, 
Float through the " then" and " when," 
Rising from when to then. 
Sinking from then to when. 

While the waves go ! 

Low and high, high and low. 
Now and then, then and now, 
Now, now, — 
And when the now is then and when the then is now. 
And when the low is high and when the high is low. 
Low, low, — 
Let me float, let the boat 
Go, go ! 



548 SYDNEY THOMPSON DOBELL. ' 

i 
Let me glide, let me slide, 

Slow, slow ! 

Gliding boat, sliding boat, - 

Slow, slow, j 

Glide away, slide away ! ) 

So ! so I i 

HOW'S MY BOY? 

" Ho, sailor of the sea ! i 

How's my Boy, my Boy ? " I 

*' What's your boy's name ? good wife ! j 

And in what good ship sail'd he ? " 

" My boy John ! 

He that went to sea — \ 

What care I for the ship ? sailor ! \ 

My boy's my boy to me. ; 

! 

" You come back from sea, 

And not know my John ? i 

I might as well have ask'd some landsman j 

Yonder down in the town. J 

There's not an ass in all the parish, | 

But he knows my John. i 

** How's my boy, my boy ? 

And unless you let me know, i 

I'll swear you are no sailor, \ 

Blue jacket or no, — ; 

Brass buttons or no, sailor ! ' 

Anchor and crown or no. i 

Sure his ship was the Jolly Briton ! " \ 

— '' Speak low, woman ! speak low ! " j 

" And why should I speak low, sailor ! | 

About my own boy John ? | 

If I was loud as I am proud, '\ 

I'd sing him over the town : ^ 



HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. 249 

Why should I speak low ? sailor ! " 
— " That good ship went down." 

*' How's my boy ? how's my boy ? 
What care I for the ship ? sailor ! 
I was never aboard her : 
Be she afloat or be she aground, 
Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound 
Her owners can afford her. 
I say, how's my John ? " 
— " Every man on board went down, — 
Every man aboard her." 

" How's my boy, my boy ? 

What care I for the men ? sailor ! 
I'm not their mother. 
How's my boy, my boy ? 
Tell me of him, and no other ! 
How's my boy, my boy ? " 

HENRY HOW^ARD BROWNELL. 

1824 — 1872. 



THE BURIAL OF THE DANE. 

Blue gulf all around us. 

Blue sky overhead : 
Muster all on the quarter ! 

We must bury the dead. 

It is but a Danish sailor. 

Rugged of front and form, — 

A common son of the forecastle. 
Grizzled with sun and storm. 

His name and the strand he hail'd from 
We know, — and there's nothing more 

But perhaps his mother is waiting 
In the lonely Island of Fohr, 



250 HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL. 

Still as he lay there dying, 
Reason drifting, a wreck, 
" 'Tis my watch ! " he would mutter, — 
*' I must go upon deck ! " 

Ay, on deck, by the foremast ! — 
But watch and look-out are done : 

The Union-Jack laid o'er him, 
How quiet he lies in the sun ! 

Slow the ponderous engine ! 

Stay the hurrying shaft ! 
Let the roll of ocean 

Cradle our giant craft ! 
Gather around the grating, 

Carry your messmate aft ! 

Stand in order, and listen 

To the holiest page of prayer ; 
Let every foot be quiet, 

Every head be bare ! 
The soft trade-wind is lifting 

A hundred locks of hair. 

Our captain reads the service 

(A little spray on his cheeks). 
The grand old words of burial, 

And the trust a true heart seeks — 
We therefore commit his body 

To the deep ! " — and as he speaks, 

Launch'd from the weather-railing 

Swift as the eye can mark. 
The ghastly shotted hammock 

Plunges, away from the shark, 
Down, a thousand fathoms, 

Down into the dark ! 

A thousand summers and winters 
The stormy Gulf shall roll 



ti 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 25 1 

High o'er his canvas coffin : — 

But, silence to doubt and dole ! 
There's a quiet harbour somewhere 

For the poor aweary soul. 

Free the fetter'd engine ! 

Speed the tireless shaft ! 
Loose to'gallant and topsail ! 

The breeze is far abaft. 

Blue sea all around us, 

Blue sky bright o'erhead : 
Every man to his duty ! 

We have buried our dead. 

QU'IL MOURUT! 

Not a sob, not a tear he spent 

For those who fell at his side ! 
But a moan, and a long lament 

For him — who might have died ! 

Who might have lain, as Harold lay, 

A King, and in state enow, 
Or slept with his peers, like Roland 

In the Straits of Roncesvaux. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
1824— 



SONG. 

Rushes lean over the water, 

Shells lie on the shore. 
And thou, the blue Ocean's daughter, 

Sleep'st soft in the song of its roar. 

Clouds sail over the ocean. 
White gusts fleck its calm, 



252 THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE. 

But never its wildest motion 
Thy beautiful rest should harm. 

White feet on the edge of the billow 
Mock its smooth-seething cream ; 

Hard ribs of beach-sand thy pillow, 
And a noble lover thy dream. 

Like tangles of sea-weed streaming 

Over a perfect pearl, 
Thy fair hair fringes thy dreaming, 

O sleeping Lido girl. 

MAJOR AND MINOR. 
A bird sang sweet and strong 

In the top of the highest tree : 
He sang — " I pour out my soul in song 

For the Summer that soon shall be." 

But deep in the shady wood 

Another bird sang — '' I pour 
My soul on the solemn solitude 

For the Springs that return no more." 

THOMAS D'ARCY McGEE. 
1825— 1868. 



THE PENITENT RAVEN. 
The Raven's house is built with reeds, — 

Sing woe, and alas is me ! 
And the Raven's couch is spread with weeds, 

High on the hollow tree ; 
And the Raven himself, telling his beads 
In penance for his past misdeeds, 

Upon the top I see. 

Telling his beads from night to morn, — 
Sing alas ! and woe is me ! 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 253 

In penance for stealing the Abbot's corn, 

High on the hollow tree. 
Sin is a load upon the breast ; 
And it nightly breaks the Raven's rest, 

High on the hoUov/ tree. 

The Raven pray'd the Winter through, — 

Sing woe, and alas is me ! 
The hail it fell, the winds they blew, 

High on the hollow tree, — 
Until the Spring came forth again. 
And the Abbot's men to sow their grain 

Around the hollow tree. 

Alas ! alas for earthly vows, — 

Sing alas ! and woe is me ! 
Whether they're made by men or crows 

High on the hollow tree ! 
The Raven swoop'd upon the seed. 
And met his death in the very deed. 

Beneath the hollow tree. 

So beat we our breasts in shame of sin, — 

Alas ! and woe is me ! 
While all is hollo wness within : 

Alas ! and woe is me ! 
And when the ancient Tempter smiles. 
So yield we our souls up to his wiles : 

Alas ! and woe is me ! 

BAYARD TAYLOR. 

1825—1878. 



THE WISDOM OF ALT. 
The Prophet once, sitting in calm debate. 
Said — " I am Wisdom's fortress ; but the gate 
Thereof is Ali." Wherefore some who heard 
With unbelieving jealousy were stirr'd ; 



254 BAYARD TAYLOR. 

And, that they might on him confusion bring, 
Ten of the boldest join'd to prove the thing. 
" Let us in turn to Ali go ! " they said, — 
^' And ask if Wisdom should be sought instead 
Of earthly riches : then, if he reply 
To each of us in thought accordantly. 
And yet to none in speech or phrase the same, 
His shall the honour be, and ours the shame." 

Now, when the first his bold demand did make. 
These were the words which Ali straightway spake : 
" Wisdom is the inheritance of those 

Whom Allah favours ; riches of his foes." 

Unto the second he said — '' Thy self must be 
Guard to thy wealth ; but Wisdom guardeth thee." 

Unto the third — '' By Wisdom wealth is won ; 
But riches purchased Wisdom yet for none." 

Unto the fourth — '' Thy goods the thief may take ; 
But into Wisdom's house he can not break." 

Unto the fifth — " Thy goods decrease the more 
Thou givest ; but use enlarges Wisdom's store." 

Unto the sixth — '' Wealth tempts to evil ways ; 
But the desire of Wisdom is God's praise." 

Unto the seventh — " Divide thy wealth, each part 
Becomes a pittance ; give with open heart 
Thy Wisdom, and each separate gift shall be 
All that thou hast, yet not impoverish thee." 

Unto the eighth — '' Wealth can not keep itself; 
But Wisdom is the steward even of pelf." 

Unto the ninth — '' The camels slowly bring 

Thy goods ; but Wisdom has the swallow's wing." 

And lastly, when the tenth did question make. 
These were the ready words which Ali spake : 



BAYARD TAYLOR. 255 

" Wealth is a darkness which the soul should fear ; 
But Wisdom is the lamp that makes it clear." 

Crimson with shame the questioners withdrew, 

And they declared — " The Prophet's words were true : 

The mouth of Ali is the golden door 

Of Wisdom." When his friends to Ali bore 

These words, he smiled and said : '' And should they ask 

The same until my dying day, the task 

Were easy, — for the stream from Wisdom's well, 

Which God supplies, is inexhaustible." 



BEDOUIN SONG. 

From the Desert I come to thee, 

On a stallion shod with fire ; 
And the winds are left behind 

In the speed of my desire ! 
Under thy window I stand, 

And the midnight hears my cry — 
I love thee, I love but thee, 

With a love that shall not die 
Till the sun grows cold 
And the stars are old 
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold. 

Look from thy window, and see 

My passion and my pain ! 
I lie on the sands below. 

And I faint in thy disdain. 
Let the night winds touch thy brow 

With the heat of my burning sigh, 
And melt thee to hear the vow 

Of a love that shall not die 

Till the sun grows cold 
And the stars are old 
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold. 



256 BAYARD TAYLOR. 

My steps are nightly driven 

By the fever in my breast 
To hear from thy lattice breathed 

The word that shall give me rest. 
Open the door of thy heart ! 

And open thy chamber door ! 
And my kisses shall teach thy lips 

The love that shall fade no more 
Till the sun grows cold 
And the stars are old 
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold. 

THE ARAB TO THE PALM. 

Next to thee, O fair Gazelle ! 

O Beddowee Girl, beloved so well ! 

Next to the fearless Nedjidee, 

Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee, — 

Next to ye both I love the Palm, 

With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm : 

Next to ye both I love the Tree 
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three 
With love and silence and mystery. 

Our tribe is many, our poets vie 

With any under the Arab sky : 

Yet none can sing of the Palm but I. 

The marble minarets that begem 

Cairo's citadel-diadem 

Are not so light as his slender stem. 

He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam's glance. 
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance : 

A slumbrous motion, a passionate sign, 
That works in the cells of the blood like wine. 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 25/ 

Full of passion and sorrow is he, 
Dreaming where the Beloved may be. 

And when the warm South-Winds arise, 
He breathes his longing in fervid sighs, 

Quickening odours, kisses of balm. 
That drop in the lap of his chosen Palm. 

The sun may flame and the sands may stir, 
But the breath of his passion reaches her. 

O Tree of Love ! by that love of thine, 
Teach me how I shall soften mine ! 

Give me the secret of the Sun, 
Whereby the woo'd is ever won ! 

If I were a king, O stately Tree ! 
A likeness, glorious as might be, 
In the court of my palace I'd build for thee : 

With a shaft of silver burnish'd bright, 
And leaves of beryl and malachite. 

With spikes of golden bloom ablaze, 
And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase. 

And there the poets in thy praise 

Should night and morning frame new lays, — 

New measures sung to tunes divine : 
But none, O Palm ! should equal mine. 

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 

1825— 



BRAHMA'S ANSWER. 
Once, when the days were ages, 
And the old Earth was young, 
The high Gods and the sages 
From Nature's golden pages 
Her open secrets wrung. 
11.-^17 



258 RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. : 

I 

Each question'd each to know • 

Whence came the Heavens above, and whence the Earth - 

below. i 

Indra, the endless giver i 

Of every gracious thing ] 

The Gods to him deliver, 

Whose bounty is the river > 

Of which they are the spring, — ' 

Indra, with anxious heart, ! 

Ventures with Vivochunu where Brahma is apart. I 

*^ Brahma! Supremest Being ! 

By whom the worlds are made, — ; 

W^here we are blind, all-seeing, — j 

Stable, where we are fleeing, j 

Of Life and Death afraid, — j 

Instruct us, for mankind, ■ 

What is the body, Brahma ? O Brahma ! what the mind ? " i 

Hearing us though he heard not, J 

So perfect was his rest, '< 

So vast the Soul that err'd not, j 

So wise the lips that stirr'd not, — \ 

His hand upon his breast 1 

He laid, whereat his face ^J 

Was mirror'd in the river that girt that holy place. *■ 

They question'd each the other t 

What Brahma's answer meant. ■}, 

Said Vivochunu — '' Brother ! 

Through Brahma the Great Mother 
Hath spoken her intent : 

Man ends as he began, — 
The shadow on the water is all there is of Man." 

" The Earth with woe is cumber'd. 

And no man understands ; ../»; 

\ 

•j 



RICHARD HENRY STODDARD. 259 

They see their days are number'd 
By One that never slumber'd 

Nor stay'd his dreadful hands. 
/ see with Brahma's eyes : 
The body is the shadow that on the water Hes." 

Thus Indra, looking deeper, 

With Brahma's self possessed. 
So dry thine eyes, thou weeper ! 
And rise again, thou sleeper ! 

The hand on Brahma's breast 
Is his divine assent 
Covering the soul that dies not. This is what Brahma meant. 



A JAR OF WINE. 

Day and night my thoughts incline 
To the blandishments of wine : 
Jars were made to drain, I think ; 
Wine, I know, was made to drink. 

When I die (the day be far !) 
Should the potters make a jar 
Out of this poor clay of mine. 
Let the jar be fill'd with wine ! 



UNDER THE ROSE. 

She wears a rose in her hair, 

At the twilight's dreamy close 
Her face is fair, — how fair 
Under the rose ! 

I steal like a shadow there, 

As she sits in rapt repose, 
And whisper my loving prayer 
Under the rose. 



26o ELIZABETH DREW BARSTOW STODDARD. 

She takes the rose from her hair, 

And her colour comes and goes, 
And I, — a lover will dare 
Under the rose. 

ELIZABETH DREW BARSTOW STODDARD. 

1823— 



MERCEDES. 



Under a sultry yellow sky 

On the yellow sand I lie : 

The crinkled vapours smite my brain, 

I smoulder in a fiery pain. 

Above the crags the condor flies, — 
He knows where the red gold lies, 
He knows where the diamonds shine : 
If I knew, would she be mine ? 

Mercedes in her hammock swings,- — 
In her court a palm tree flings 
Its slender shadow on the ground, 
The fountain falls with silver sound. 

Her lips are like this cactus-cup, — 
With my hand I crush it up, 
I tear its flaming leaves apart : 
Would that I could tear her heart ! 

Last night a man was at her gate : 
In the hedge I lay in wait : 
I saw Mercedes meet him there. 
By the fire-flies in her hair. 

I waited till the break of day, 
Then I rose and stole away ; 
But left my dagger in her gate : 
Now she knows her lover's fate. 



ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. 26 1 

ADELAIDE ANNE PROCTER. 
1825— 1864. 



A WOMAN'S QUESTIONING, J 

Before I trust my fate to thee, (1 

Or place my hand in thine, , 

Before I let thy Future give 

Colour and form to mine, •■ 

Before I peril all for thee, Ii 

Question thy soul to-night for me ! I 

I break all slighter bonds, nor feel ij 

A shadow of regret : ! 

Is there one link within the Past ' 
That holds thy spirit yet ? 

Or is thy faith as clear and free .' 

As that which I can pledge to thee ? 

I 

Does there within thy dimmest dreams \ 

A possible future shine :> 

Wherein thy life could henceforth breathe, 
Untouch'd, unshared by mine ? 

If so, at any pain or cost, ,, 

O tell me, before all is lost! '\ 

Look deeper still ! If thou canst feel !' 

Within thy inmost soul " J 

That thou hast kept a portion back, '\ 

While I have staked the whole, ^ 

Let no false pity spare the blow, 

But in true mercy tell me so ! ] 

Is there within thy heart a need ,| 

That mine can not fulfil, I'i 

One cord that any other hand 

Could better wake, or still ? j 

Speak now, lest at some future day \ 

My whole life wither and decay ! 1 



262 LUCY LARCOM. 

Lives there within thy nature hid 

The demon spirit — Change, 
Shedding a passing glory still 

On all things new and strange ? 
It may not be thy fault alone : 
But shield my heart against thy own ! 

Couldst thou withdraw thy hand one day, 

And answer to my claim 
That Fate, and that to-day's mistake, 

Not thou, had been to blame ? 
Some soothe their conscience thus : but thou 
Wilt surely warn and save me now. 

Nay ! answer not ! I dare not hear : 

The words would come too late. 
Yet I would spare thee all remorse : 

So comfort thee, my Fate ! 
Whatever on my heart may fall, 
Remember — I would risk it all. 

LUCY LARCOM. 

1826— 



SLEEP-SONG. 
Hush the homeless baby's crying. 
Tender Sleep ! 
Every folded violet 
May the outer storm forget : 
Those wet lids with kisses drying, 
Through them creep ! 

Soothe the soul that lies thought-weary. 
Murmurous Sleep ! 
Like a hidden brooklet's song, 
Rippling gorgeous woods among. 
Tinkling down the mountains dreary, 
White and steep. 



MORTIMER COLLINS. 20; 

Breathe thy balm upon the lonely, 
Gentle Sleep ! 
As the twilight breezes bless 
With sweet scents the wilderness, 
Ah, let warm white dove-wings only 
Round them sweep ! 

O'er the aged pour thy blessing, 
Holy Sleep ! 
Like a soft and ripening rain 
Falling on the yellow grain. 
For the glare of suns oppressing, 
Pitying weep ! 

O'er thy still seas met together. 
Charmed Sleep ! 
Hear them swell a drowsy hymning, 
Swans to silvery music swimming. 
Floating with unruffled feather 
O'er the deep ! 

MORTIMER COLLINS. 

1827— 1876. 



SNOW AND SUN. 
Fast falls the snow, O Lady mine ! 
Sprinkling the lawn with crystals fine : 
But, by the Gods, we won't repine, 

While we're together ; 
We'll chat and rhyme and kiss and dine. 

Defying weather. 

So stir the fire, and pour the wine ! 
And let those sea-green eyes divine 
Pour their love-madness into mine ! 

I don't care whether 
'Tis snow or sun or rain or shine. 

If we're together. 



264 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. 



WILLIAM ALLINGHAM. 

1828— 



THE TOUCHSTONE. 

A man there came, whence none could tell, 
Bearing a Touchstone in his hand ; 
And tested all things in the land 
By its unerring spell. 

Quick birth of transformation smote 
The fair to foul, the foul to fair ; 
Purple nor ermine did he spare, 
Nor scorn the dusty coat. 

Of heirloom jewels, prized so much, 
Were many changed to chips and clods ; 
And even statues of the Gods 
Crumbled beneath its touch. 

Then angrily the people cried — 
The loss outweighs the profit far : 
Our goods suffice us as they are, — 
We will not have them tried.'* 

And since they could not so avail 
To check his unrelenting quest, 
They seized him, saying — " Let him test 
How real is our jail ! " 

But though they slew him with the sword, 
And in a fire his Touchstone burn'd. 
Its doings could not be o'erturn'd, 
Its undoings restored. 

And when, to stop all future harm. 
They strew'd its ashes on the breeze, 
They little guess'd each grain of these 
Convey'd the perfect charm. 



ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY. 265 



ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY. 
1828— 



VIOLET. 
She stood where I had used to wait 

For her, beneath the gaunt old yew, 
And near a column of the gate 

That open'd on the avenue. 

The moss that capp'd its granite ball, 
The grey and yellow lichen stains, 

The ivy on the old park wall, 

Were glossy with the morning rains. 

She stood amid such tearful gloom ; 

But close behind her, out of reach, 
Lay many a mound of orchard bloom, 

And trellis'd blossoms of the peach. 

Those peaches blooming to the South, 
Those orchard blossoms, seem'd to me 

Like kisses of her rosy mouth 
Revived on trellis and on tree : 

Kisses that die not when the thrill 
Of joy that answer'd them is mute, 

But such as turn to use and fill 

The summer of our days with fruit. 

And she, impressing half the sole 

Of one small foot against the ground, 

Stood resting on the yew-tree bole, 
A-tiptoe to each sylvan sound. 

She, whom I thought so still and shy, 
Express'd in every subtle move 

Of lifted hand and open eye 
The large expectancy of love. 



266 ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY. 

Until, with all her dewy hair 

Dissolved into a golden flame 
Of sunshine on the sunless air, 

She came to meet me as I came. 

But in her face no sunshine shone ; 

No sunlight, but the sad unrest 
Of shade that sinks from zone to zone 

When twilight glimmers in the West. 

What grief had touch'd her on the nerve ? 

For grief alone it is that stirs 
The full ineffable reserve 

Of quiet spirits such as hers. 

'Twas this that v^e had met to part ; 

That I was going, and that she 
Had nothing left but her true heart 

Made strong by memories of me. 

What wonder then she quite forgot 

Her old repression and controul. 
And loosed at once, and stinted not, 

The tender tumult of her soul? 

What wonder that she droop'd and lay 

In silence, and at length in tears. 
On that which should have been the stay 

And comfort of her matron years ? 

But from her bosom, as she lean'd, 

She took a nestled violet. 
And gave it me : *' because 'twas mean'd 

For those who never can forget." 

This is the flower ! 'tis dry — or wet 
With something I may call my own. 

Why did I rouse this old regret ? 
It irks me, now, to be alone. 



ARTHUR JOSEPH MUNBY. 26/ 

Triumphs, indeed ! Why, after all, 

My life has but a leaden hue : 
My heart grows like the heart of Saul, 

For hatred, and for madness too. 

Why sits that smirking minstrel there ? 

I hate him and the songs he sings : 
They only bring the fond despair 

Of inaccessible sweet things. 

I will avoid him once for all, 

Or slay him in my righteous ire ; — 

Alas ! my javelin hits the wall, 

And spares the minstrel and his lyre. 

Yea ! and the crown upon my head, 
The crown of wealth for which I strove, 

Shall fall away ere I be dead 

To yon slight boy who sings of love. 

Why are we captive, such as I, 

Mature in age and strong in will, 
To one who harps so plaintively ? 

I struck at him : why lives he still ? 

Why lives he still ? Because the ruth 
Of those pure days may never die. 

He lives because his name is Youth, 
Because his harp is Memory. 

MAR Y ANERLE Y. 

Little Mary Anerley, sitting on the stile ! 
Why do you blush so red, and why so strangely smile ? 
Somebody has been with you : somebody, I know. 
Left that sunset on your cheek, left you smiling so. 

Gentle Mary Anerley, waiting by the wall, 

Waiting in the chestnut walk where the snowy blossoms fall ! 



268 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 

Somebody is coming there : somebody, I'm sure, 

Knows your eyes are full of love, knows your heart is pure. 

Happy Mary Anerley, looking O so fair ! 

There's a ring upon your hand, and there's myrtle in your hair. 

Somebody is with you now : somebody, I see, 

Looks into your trusting face very tenderly. 

Quiet Mary Forester, sitting by the shore. 
Rosy faces at your knee, roses round the door ! 
Somebody is coming home : somebody, I know. 
Made you sorry when he sailed. Are you sorry now ? 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 

1828— 1882. 



THE CARD-DEALER. 

Could you not drink her gaze like wine ? 

Yet, though its splendour swoon 
Into the silence languidly 

As a tune into a tune. 
Those eyes unravel the coil'd night 

And know the stars at noon. 

The gold that's heap'd beside her hand 

In truth rich prize it were ; 
And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows 

With magic stillness there ; 
And he were rich who would unwind 

That woven golden hair. 

Around her, where she sits, the dance 

Now breathes its eager heat ; 
And not more lightly or more true 

Fall there the dancers' feet 
Than fall her cards on the bright board, 

As 'twere a heart that beat. 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 269 

Her fingers let them softly through, 

Smooth polish'd silent things ; 
And each one as it falls reflects 

In swift light-shadovvings, 
Blood-red and purple, green and blue. 

The great eyes of her rings. 

Whom plays she with ? With thee who Icvcst 

Those gems upon her hand ; 
With me, who search her secret brows ; 

With all men, bless'd or bann'd. 
We play together, she and we, 

Within a vain strange land. 

A land without any order, — 

Day even as night (one saith), — • 
Where who lieth down ariseth not 

Nor the sleeper awakeneth ; 
A land of darkness as darkness itself 

And of the shadow of death. 

What be her cards ? you ask. Even these : 

The heart, that doth but crave 
More, having fed ; the diamond, 

Skill'd to make base seem brave ; 
The club, for smiting in the dark ; 

The spade, to dig a grave. 

And do you ask what game she plays ? 

With me 'tis lost or won ; 
With thee it is playing still ; with him 

It is not well begun : 
But 'tis a game she plays with all 

Beneath the sway o* the sun. 

Thou seest the card that falls ; — she knows 
The card that foUoweth : 



270 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 

Her game in thy tongue is call'd Life, 

As ebbs thy daily breath : 
When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue, 

And know she calls it Death. 

FIRST LOVE REMEMBERED. 
Peace in her chamber ! whereso'er 

It be, a holy place : 
The thought still brings my soul such grace 
As morning meadows wear. 

Whether it still be small and light, 
A maid's, who dreams alone, 

As from her orchard gate the moon 
Its ceiling show'd at night : 

Or whether, in a shadow dense, 

As nuptial hymns invoke. 
Innocent maidenhood awoke 

To married innocence : 

There still the thanks unheard await 

The unconscious gift bequeath'd, — 

For there my soul this hour has breathed 
An air inviolate. 

LILITH. 
Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told 
(The witch beloved before the gift of Eve) 
That, ere the Snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive. 
And her enchanted hair was the first gold. 
And still she sits, young while the earth is old. 
And, subtly of herself contemplative. 
Draws men to watch the bright net she can weave. 
Till heart and body and life are in its hold. 

The rose and poppy are her flowers : for where 
Is he not found, O Lilith ! whom shed scent 



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 2/1 j] 

And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare ? j:; 
Lo ! as that youth's eyes burn'd at thine, so went 

Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent, < 

And round his heart one strangling golden hair. i 

TRUE WOMAN. 

To be a sweetness more desired than Spring ; ; 

A bodily beauty more acceptable ) 

Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell ; 'm 

To be an essence more environing 

Than wine's drain'd juice ; a music ravishing : 

More than the passionate pulse of Philomel ; — .; 

To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell i 

That is the flower of life : — how strange a thing ! 

How strange a thing to be what man can know ■ 

But as a sacred secret ! Heaven's own screen ' 

Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow, — 1 

Closely withheld as all things most unseen : \ 

The wave-bower'd pearl, — the heart-shape seal of green 

That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow. '. 

'i 

LOST DAYS. i 

The lost days of my life until to-day, \ 
What were they, could I see them on the street 
Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat 
Sown once for food but trodden into clay ? 

Or golden coins squander'd and still to pay ? i* 

Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ? jj 

Or such spill'd water as in dreams must cheat ]' 

The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway ? 5? 

I do not see them here ; but after death ■{ 

God knows I know the faces I shall see, — ; 

Each one a murder'd self, with low last breath : j 

" I am thyself, — what hast thou done to me ? " 1 

" And I— and I~thyself " (lo ! each one saith) — 

" And thou thyself to all eternity." 



2/2 CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI. 

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI. 

1830— 



SONG. 

When I am dead, my Dearest ! 

Sing no sad songs for me ; 
Plant thou no roses at my head, 

No shady cypress-tree ! 
Be the green grass above me, 

With showers and dew-drops wet ; 
And, if thou wilt, remember ! 

And, if thou wilt, forget ! 

I shall not see the shadows, 

I shall not feel the rain, 
I shall not hear the nightingale 

Sing on as if in pain : 
And dreaming through the twilight 

That doth not rise nor set. 
Haply I may remember, — 

And haply may forget. 



THE BOURNE. 

Underneath the growing grass, 
Underneath the living flowers. 
Deeper than the sound of showers, 
There we shall not count the hours 
By the shadows as they pass. 

Youth and health will be but vain, 
Beauty reckon'd of no worth, — 
There a very little girth 
Can hold round what once the earth 
Seem'd too narrow to contain. 



JEAN INGELOW. 2/3 

JEAN INGELOW. 

1830— 



EXPECTING. 



I lean'd out of window, I smell'd the white clover ; 
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate : 
Now, if there be footsteps, he comes, my one lover : — 
Hush, nightingale ! hush; O sweet nightingale ! wait. 

Till I listen and hear 

If a step draweth near ! 

For my Love he is late. 

The skies in the darkness stoop nearer and nearer, 
A cluster of stars hangs like fruit in the tree. 
The fall of the water comes sweeter, comes clearer : 
To what art thou listening, and what dost thou see? 
Let the star-clusters glow. 
Let the sweet waters flow. 
And cross quickly to me ! 

You night-moths that hover where honey brims over 
From sycamore blossoms, or settle, or sleep ! 
You glow-worms, shine out and the pathway discover 
To him that comes darkling along the rough steep ! 

Ah, my sailor ! make haste ! 

For the time runs to waste 

And my love lieth deep. 

Too deep for swift telling : and yet, my one lover ! 

I've conn'd thee an answer, it waits thee to-night. 

By the sycamore pass'd he and through the white clover. 

Then all the sweet speech I had fashion'd took flight. 
But I'll love him more, more, 
Than e'er wife loved before, 
Be the days dark or bright. 
II.— 18 



274 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

1833- 



THE DOORSTEP. 

The conference meeting through at last, 
We boys around the vestry waited 

To see the girls come tripping past, 
Like snow-birds willing to be mated. 

Not braver he that leaps the wall 

By level musket-flashes bitten. 
Than I, who stepp'd before them all 

Who long'd to see me get the mitten. 

But no ! she blush'd and took my arm : 
We let the old folks have the highway, 

And started tow'rd the Maple Farm 
Along a kind of lover's by-way. 

I can't remember what we said, — 
'Twas nothing worth a song or story ; 

Yet that rude path by which we sped 
Seem'd all transform'd and in a glory. 

The snow was crisp beneath our feet, 

The moon was full, the fields were gleaming ; 

By hood and tippet shelter'd sweet. 

Her face with youth and health was beaming. 

The little hand outside her muff 

(O sculptor ! if you could but mould it) 

So lightly touch'd my jacket-cuff. 
To keep it warm I had to hold it. 

To have her there with me alone, — 

'Twas love and fear and triumph blended : 

At last we reach'd the foot-worn stone 
Where that delicious journey ended. 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 275 

The old folks too were almost home : 
Her dimpled hand the latches finger'd, 

We heard the voices nearer come, 
Yet on the doorstep still we linger'd. 

She shook her ringlets from her hood, 

And with a *' Thank you, Ned ! " dissembled ; 

But yet I knew she understood 

With what a daring wish I trembled. 

A cloud pass'd kindly overhead, 

The moon was slyly peeping through it, 

Yet hid its face, as if it said — 

'' Come, now or never do it ! do it ! " 

My lips till then had only known 
The kiss of mother and of sister, — 

But somehow, full upon her own 

Sweet rosy darling mouth — I kiss'd her. 

Perhaps 'twas boyish love : yet still, 

O listless woman ! weary lover ! 
To feel once more that fresh wild thrill 

I'd give But who can live youth over ? 



TO Uy OURS AMOUR. 

Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin ! 
At what age does love begin ? 
Your blue eyes have scarcely seen 
Summers three, my fairy queen ! 
But a miracle of sweets, 
Soft approaches, sly retreats, 
Show the little archer there. 
Hidden in your pretty hair : 
When didst learn a heart to win ? 
Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin ! 



2^6 EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN. 

" O ! " the rosy lips reply, — 
" I can't tell you if I try : 

'Tis so long I can't remember, — 

Ask some younger lass than I ! " 

Tell, O tell me, Grizzled- Face ! 
Do your heart and head keep pace ? 
When does hoary love expire ? 
When do frosts put out the fire ? 
Can its embers burn below 
All that chill December snow ? 
Care you still soft hands to press. 
Bonny heads to smooth and bless ? 
When does Love give up the chase ? 
Tell, O tell me, Grizzled-Face ! 

*' Ah ! " the wise old lips reply, — 

*' Youth may pass and strength may die, 

But of Love I can't foretoken 

Ask some older sage than L" 

MINE. 

Thou art mine, thou hast given thy word, 

Close, close in my arms thou art clinging ; 

Alone for my ear thou art singing 

A song w^hich no stranger hath heard : 

But afar from me yet, like a bird. 

Thy soul in some region unstirr'd 

On its mystical circuit is winging. 

Thou art mine, I have made thee mine own, — 
Henceforth we are mingled for ever : 
But in vain, all in vain I endeavour, 
Though round thee my garlands are thrown 
And thou yieldest thy lips and thy zone, 
To master the spell that alone 
My hold on thy being can sever. 



GEORGE ARNOLD. 2// 

Thou art mine, thou hast come unto me : 

But thy soul, when I strive to be near it, 

The innermost fold of thy spirit, 

Is as far from my grasp, is as free, 

As the stars from the mountain-tops be. 

As the pearl in the depths of the sea 

From the portionless king who would wear it. 



i/ GEORGE ARNOLD. 

1834—1865. 



GLORIA. ' 

IN TIME OF WAR. \ 

The laurels shine in the morning sun, 1 

The tall grass shakes its glittering spears, \ 

And the webs the spiders last night spun 1 

Are threaded with pearly tears. | 

At peace with the world and all therein, \ 

I walk in the fields this summer morn : | 

What should I know of sorrow or sin j 

Among the laurels and corn ? | 

But hark ! through the corn a murmur comes, — \ 

'Tis growing, 'tis swelling, it rises high : ^ 

The thunder of guns and the roll of drums, \ 

And an army marching by. 1 

Away with the sloth of peace and ease ! \ 

'Tis a nation's voice that seems to call : '\ 

Who cares for aught in times like these ' 
Save to win, or else to fall ? 

Farewell, O shining laurels ! now, 

I go with the army marching by : j 

Your leaves, should I win, may deck my brow, — \ 

Or my bier, if I should die. 



2/8 JOHN NICHOL. 

JOHN NICHOL. 

1833— 



IMP A TIENCE. 



Our life is spent in little things, 

In little cares our hearts are drown'd 

We move, with heavy-laden wings, 
In the same narrow round. 

We waste on wars and petty strife. 
And squander in a thousand ways. 

The fire that should have been the life 
And power of after days. 

We toil to make an outward show. 
And only now and then reveal 

How far the under currents flow 
Of all we think and feel. 

Mining in caves of ancient lore. 

Unweaving endless webs of thought, 

We do what has been done of yore : 
And so we come to nought. 

The Spirit longs for wider scope, 
And room to let its fountains play 

Ere it has lost its love and hope, 
Tamed down or worn away. 

I wander by the cloister walls. 
My fancy fretting to be free 

As, through the twilight, voices call 
From mountain and from sea. 

Forgive me if I feel oppress'd 
By Custom, lord of all and me ! 

My soul springs upward, seeking rest, 
And cries for liberty. 



LEWIS MORRIS. 2/9 

LEWIS MORRIS. 

1833— 



LOVE'S SUICIDE. 

Alas for me that my love is dead ! 
Sunk fathom-deep, and may not rise again : 
Self-murder'd, vanish'd, fled beyond recall : 
And this is all my pain. 

'Tis not that She I loved is gone from me ; 
She lives, and grows more lovely day by day : 
Not Death could kill my love, — but, though She lives. 
My love has died away. 

Nor was it that a form or face more fair 
Forswore my troth, for so my love had proved 
Eye-deep alone, not rooted in the soul : 
And 'twas not thus I loved. 

Nor that, by too long dalliance with delight 
And recompense of love, my love had grown 
Surfeit with sweets, like some tired bee that flags 
'Mid roses overblown. 

None of these slew my love ; but some cold wind, 
Some chill of doubt, some shadowy dissidence, 
Born out of too great concord, did o'ercloud 
Love's subtle inner sense. 

So one sweet changeless chord too long sustain'd 
Falls at its close into a lower tone ; 
So the swift train, sped on the long straight way, 
Sways and is overthrown. 

For difference is the soul of life and love. 
And not the barren oneness weak souls prize : 
Rest springs from strife, and dissonant chords beget 
Divinest harmonies. 



28o HELEN FISKE JACKSON. 

HELEN FISKE JACKSON. 

1833-5— 



CORONATION. 



At the king's gate the subtle Noon 

Wove filmy yellow nets of sun ; 
Into the drowsy snare too soon 

The guards fell, one by one. 

Through the king's gate unquestion'd then 
A beggar went, and laugh'd — " This brings 

Me chance at last to see if men 
Fare better, being kings." 

The king sat bow'd beneath his crown, 
Propping his face with listless hand, 

Watching the hour-glass shifting down 
Too slow its shining sand. 

Poor man ! what wouldst thou have of mc ? " 

The beggar turn'd and, pitying, 
Replied, like one in dream — '' Of thee 

Nothing : I want the king." 

Uprose the king, and from his head 
Shook off the crown and threw it by : 

O man! thou must have known," he said, 
" A greater king than I." 

Through all the gates unquestion'd then 
Went king and beggar, hand in hand : 

Whisper'd the king — " Shall I know when 
Before his throne I stand ? " 

The beggar laugh'd (free winds in haste 
Were wiping from the king's hot brow 

The crimson lines the crown had traced) : 
" This is his presence now ! " 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 28l 

At the king's gate the crafty Noon 

Unwove its yellow nets of sun ; 
Out of their sleep in terror soon 

The guards waked, one by one. 

*' Ho here ! ho there ! has no man seen 
The king ? " the cry ran to and fro : 
Beggar and king they laugh'd, I ween, 
The laugh that free men know. 

On the king's gate the moss grew grey ; 

The king came not. They call'd him dead ; 
And made his eldest son one day 

Slave in his father's stead. 

WILLIAM MORRIS. 

1834- 



SOJVG. 

Fair is the night, and fair the day, 
Now April is forgot of May, 
Now into June May falls away : 
Fair day ! fair night ! O give me back 
The tide that all fair things did lack 
Except my Love, except my Sweet ! 

Blow back, O wind ! thou art not kind, 
Though thou art sweet : thou hast no mind 
Her hair about my Sweet to bind. 

flowery sward ! though thou art bright, 

1 praise thee not for thy delight, — 
Thou hast not kiss'd her silver feet. 

Thou know'st her not, O rustling tree ! 
What dost thou then to shadow me, 
Whose shade her breast did never see ? 
O flowers ! in vain ye bow adown : 
Ye have not felt her odorous gown 
Brush past your heads my lips to meet. 



282 WILLIAM MORRIS. 

Flow on, great river ! thou mayst deem 
That far away, a summer stream, 
Thou saw'st her Rmbs amidst the gleam, 
And kiss'd her foot, and kiss'd her knee : 
Yet get thee swift unto the sea ! 
With nought of true thou wilt me greet. 

And Thou that men call by my name ! 
O helpless One ! hast thou no shame 
That thou must even look the same 
As while agone, as while agone 
When Thou and She were left alone, 
And hands and lips and tears did meet ? 

Grow weak and pine, lie down to die, 

O body ! in thy misery, 

Because short time and sweet goes by. 

O foolish heart ! how weak thou art : 

Break, break, because thou needs must part 

From thine own Love, from thine own Sweet ! 



BEFORE OUR LADY CAME. 

Before our Lady came on earth 
Little there was of joy or mirth : 
About the borders of the sea 
The sea-folk wander'd heavily ; 
About the wintry river side 
The weary fishers would abide. 

Alone, within the weaving-room. 
The girls would sit before the loom, 
And sing no song and play no play, — 
Alone, from dawn to hot mid-day, 
From mid-day unto evening, 
The men a-field would work, nor sing 
'Mid weary thoughts of man and God,- 
Before thy feet the wet ways trod. 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 283 

Unkiss'd the merchant bore his care, 

Unkiss'd the knights went out to war, ! 

Unkiss'd the mariner came home, ' 

Unkiss'd the minstrel men did roam. \ 

I 

Or in the stream the maids would stare, ! 

Nor know why they were made so fair : ! 

Their yellow locks, their bosoms white, j 

Their limbs well-wrought for all delight, 'J 

Seem'd foolish things that waited death, — \ 
As hopeless as the flowers beneath 

The weariness of unkiss'd feet : | 
No life was bitter then, or sweet. 

Therefore, O Venus ! well may we 

Praise the green ridges of the sea 

O'er which, upon a happy day, , 

Thou camest to take our shame away. [ 

Well may we praise the curdling foam | 

Amidst the which thy feet did bloom — ■ 

Flowers of the Gods ; the yellow sand I 

They kiss'd atwixt the sea and land ; 

The bee-beset ripe-seeded grass 

Through which thy fine limbs first did pass ; 

The purple-dusted butterfly I 

First blown against thy quivering thigh ; ] 

The first red rose that touch'd thy side, * 

And overblown and fainting died ; 

The flickering of the orange shade i 

Where first in sleep thy limbs were laid ; i 

The happy day's sweet life and death, 

Whose air first caught thy balmy breath : — ; 

Yea ! all these things well praised may be. 

But with what words shall we praise Thee ? i' 

O Venus ! O thou Love alive ! 

Born to give peace to souls that strive. i! 



284 JOHN JAMES PIATT. 

JOHN JAMES PIATT. 

1835- 



THE OLD MAN AND THE SPRING-LEA VES. , 

Underneath the beechen tree 

All things fall in love with me ! i 

Birds, that sing so sweetly, sung ' 

Ne'er more sweet when I was young ; 

Some sweet breeze, I will not see, 

Steals to kiss me lovingly ; 

All the leaves so blithe and bright, ; 

Dancing, sing in Maying light ! 

Over me — '' At last, at last, i 

He has stolen from the Past." \ 

\ 

Wherefore, leaves ! so gladly mad ? '\ 

I am rather sad than glad. ' 

'•'■ He is the merry child that play'd ; 

Underneath our beechen shade , 

Years ago, whom all things bright j 

Gladden'd, glad with his delight." jj 

I am not the child that play'd J 

Underneath your beechen shade ; \ 

I am not the boy ye sung 1 

Songs to, in lost fairy tongue. ; 

He read fairy dreams below, \ 
Legends leaves and flowers must know ; 

He dream'd fairy dreams, and ye \ 

Changed to fairies, in your glee m 

Dancing, singing from the tree ; :' 

And awaken'd fairy-land A 

Circled childhood's magic wand. jl 

Joy swell'd his heart, joy kiss'd his brow : ;t 

I am following funerals now. % 
Fairy shores from Time depart ; 



CELIA LEIGHTON THAXTER. 285 

Lost horizons flush my heart : 
I am not the child that play'd 
Underneath your beechen shade. 

*' 'Tis the merry child that play'd 
Underneath our beechen shade 
Years ago, whom all things bright 
Loved, made glad by his delight." 

Ah ! the bright leaves will not know 
That an old man dreams below. 
No ! they will not hear nor see, 
Clapping their hands at finding me, 
Singing, dancing from their tree. 
Ah ! their happy voices steal 
Time away : again I feel, 
While they sing to me apart. 
The lost child come in my heart : 
In the enchantment of the Past 
The old man is the child at last. 



CELIA LEIGHTON THAXTER. 

1835- 



MEDRAKE AND OSPREY. 

Medrake, waving wide wings low o'er the breeze-rippled 

bight ! 
Osprey, soaring superb overhead in the fathomless blue, 
Graceful, and fearless, and strong ! do you thrill with the 

morning's delight 
Even as I ? Brings the sunshine a message of beauty for you ? 

O the blithe breeze of the West, blowing sweet from the far 

away land, 
Bowing the grass heavy-headed, thick-crowding, so slender 

and proud ! 



286 BYRON FORCEYTHE WILLSON. 

O the warm sea sparkling over with waves by the swift wind 

fann'd ! 
O the wide sky crystal clear, with bright islands of delicate 

cloud ! 

Feel you the waking of life in the world lock'd so long in the 
frost ? 

Beautiful birds, with the light flashing bright from your ban- 
ner-like wings ! 

Osprey, soaring so high, in the depths of the sky half lost ! 

Medrake, hovering low where the sandpiper's sweet note 
rings ! 

Nothing am I to you, a blot perhaps on the day ; 

Nought do I add to your joy, but precious you are in my 
sight ; 

And you seem on your glad wings to lift me up into the ether 
away ; 

And the morning divine is more radiant because of your glori- 
ous flight. 

BYRON FORCEYTHE WILLSON. 

1837— 1867. 



THE E STRAY. 
" Now tell me, my merry woodman ! 

Why standest so aghast ? " — 
" My lord ! 'twas a beautiful creature 

That hath but just gone past ! " — 

'' A creature, — what kind of a creature ? " — 
*' Nay, now, but I do not know." — 

" Humph ! what did it make you think of? "- 
''The sunshine, or the snow." — 

" I shall overtake my horse then." — 
The woodman open'd his eye : 
The gold fell all around him ; 
And a rainbow spann'd the sky. 



WILLIAM WINTER. 28/ 

AUTUMN-SONG. 

In Spring the poet is glad, 

And in Summer the poet is gay ; 
But in Autumn the poet is sad, 

And has something sad to say : 

For the wind moans in the wood, 

And the leaf drops from the tree. 
And the cold rain falls on the graves of the good, 

And the mist comes up from the sea : 

And the Autumn Songs of the poet's soul 

Are set to the passionate grief 
Of winds that sough and bells that toll 

The dirge of the Falling Leaf. 

WILLIAM WINTER. 

1836— 



LOVE'S QUEEN. 

He loves not well whose love is bold : 
I would not have thee come too nigh. 

The sun's gold would not seem pure gold 
Unless the sun were in the sky : 

To take him thence and chain him near 

Would make his beauty disappear. 



He keeps his state : do thou keep thine, \ 

And shine upon me from afar ! ^ 

So shall I bask in light divine ■ 

That falls from Love's own guiding-star : j 

So shall thy eminence be high, 

And so my passion shall not die. \ 

But all my life shall reach its hands \ 

Of lofty longing tow'rd thy face, - 



288 WILLIAM WINTER, 

And be as one who speechless stands 

In rapture at some perfect grace : 
My love, my hope, my all shall be 
To look to heaven and look to thee. 

Thine eyes shall be the heavenly lights ; 

Thy voice shall be the summer breeze, 
What time it sways, on moonlit nights. 

The murmuring tops of leafy trees ; 
And I will touch thy beauteous form 
In June's red roses rich and warm. 

But thou — thyself — shalt not come down 
From that pure region far above ; 

But keep thy throne and wear thy crown, 
Queen of my heart and queen of love : 

A monarch in thy realm complete, 

And I a monarch at thy feet ! 



AFTER ALL. 

The apples are ripe in the orchard, 
The work of the reaper is done ; 

And the golden woodlands redden 
In the blood of the dying sun. 

At the cottage-door the grandsire 
Sits, pale, in his easy chair, 

While a gentle wind of twilight 
Plays with his silver hair. 

A woman is kneeling beside him ; 

A fair young head is press'd, 
In the first wild passion of sorrow. 

Against his aged breast. 

And far from over the distance 
The faltering echoes come 



WILLIAM WINTER. 289 

Of the flying blast of trumpet 
And the rattling roll of drum. 

Then the grandsire speaks in a whisper : 

" The end no man can see, — 
But we give him to his Country, 

And we give our prayers to Thee ! " — 

The violets star the meadows, 

The rose-buds fringe the door, 
And over the grassy orchard 

The pink-white blossoms pour. 

But the grandsire's chair is empty, 

The cottage is dark and still ; 
There's a nameless grave on the battle-field, 

And a new one under the hill. 

And a pallid tearless woman 

By the cold hearth sits alone ; 
And the old clock in the corner 

Ticks on with a steady drone. 

THE LAST SCENE. 

Here she lieth, white and chill : 

Put your hand upon her brow ! 
Her sad heart is very still, 

And she does not know you now. 

Ah ! the grave's a quiet bed : 

She will sleep a pleasant sleep, 
And the tears that you may shed 

Will not wake her, — therefore weep ! 

Weep ! for you have wrought her woe ; 

Mourn ! she mourn'd and died for you : 
Ah ! too late we come to know 

What is false and what is true. 
II.— 19 



290 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. 
1836— 



PALABRAS CARINOSAS. 
Good-night ! I have to say good-night 
To such a host of peerless things ! 
Good-night unto that fragile hand 
All queenly with its weight of rings, 
Good-night to fond up-lifted eyes, 
Good-night to chestnut braids of hair, 
Good-night unto the perfect mouth 
And all the sweetness nestled there ! 
The snowy hand detains me, — then 
I'll have to say Good-night again. 

But there will come a time, my Love ! 

When, if I read our stars aright, 

I shall not linger by this porch 

With my adieus. Till then, Good-night ! 

You wish the time were now ? And I. 

You do not blush to wish it so ? 

You would have blush'd yourself to death 

To own so much a year ago. 

What ! both these snowy hands ? ah, then 
I'll have to say Good-night again. 

TIGER-LILIES. 
I like not lady-slippers. 
Nor yet the sweet-pea blossoms. 
Nor yet the flaky roses, 

Red, or white as snow ; 
I like the chaliced lilies. 
The heavy Eastern lilies. 
The gorgeous tiger-lilies. 

That in our garden grow. 

For they are tall and slender ; 

Their mouths are dash'd with carmine ; 



RICHARD GARNETT. 29 1 

And, when the wind sweeps by them, 

On their emerald stalks 
They bend so proud and graceful : 
They are Circassian women. 
The favourites of the Sultan, 

Adown our garden walks. 

And when the rain is falling, 

I sit beside the window 

And watch them glow and glisten, — 

How they burn and glow ! 
O for the burning lilies. 
The tender Eastern lilies, 
The gorgeous tiger-lilies 

That in our garden grow ! 

RICHARD GARNETT. 

1835- 



VI O LETS. 

Cold blows the wind against the hill. 

And cold upon the plain ; 
I sit me by the bank, until 

The violets come again. 

Here sat we when the grass was set 
With violets shining through. 

And leafing branches spread a net 
To hold a sky of blue. 

The trumpet clamour'd from the plain, 

The cannon rent the sky ; 
I cried — O Love ! come back again 

Before the violets die ! 

But they are dead upon the hill. 

And he upon the plain ; — 
I sit me by the bank until 

My violets come again. 



292 THOMAS ASHE. 

FADING LEAF AND FALLEN LEAF. 

Said Fading-Leaf to Fallen-Leaf — 

I toss alone on a forsaken tree, 

It rocks and cracks with every gust that rocks 

Its straining bulk : say ! how is it with thee ? 

Said Fallen-Leaf to Fading-Leaf — 
A heavy foot went by, an hour ago : 
Crush'd into clay, I stain the way ; 
The loud Wind calls me, and I can not go. 

Said Fading-Leaf to Fallen-Leaf — 

Death lessons Life, a ghost is ever wise : 

Teach me a way to live till May 

Laughs fair with fragrant hps and loving eyes ! 

Said Fallen- Leaf to Fading-Leaf — 

Hast loved fair eyes and lips of gentle breath ? 

Fade then, and fall ! thou hast had all 

That Life can give ; ask somewhat now of Death ! 



THOMAS ASHE. 

1836— 



DALL YING. 

Dear Love ! I have not ask'd you yet ; 

Nor heard you, murmuring low 
As wood-doves by a rivulet. 

Say if it shall be so. 

The colour in your cheek, which plays 

Like an imprison'd bliss. 
In its unworded language says — 

" Speak, and I'll answer Yes ! " 

See ! pluck this flower of wood-sorrel, 
And twine it in your hair ! 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 293 

Its woodland grace becomes you well, 
And makes my Rose more fair. 

Oft you sit 'mid the daises here, 

And I lie at your feet ; 
Yet day by day goes by, — I fear 

To break a trance so sweet. 

As some first Autumn tint looks strange, 

And wakes a strange regret, 
Would your soft Yes our loving change ? — 

Love ! I'll not ask you yet. 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 

1837— 



BEFORE THE MIRROR, 

( Written under a picture.^ 

I 

White rose in red rose garden 

Is not so white ; 
Snowdrops, that plead for pardon 

And pine for fright 
Because the hard East blows 
Over their maiden rows. 
Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright. 

Behind the veil, forbidden. 

Shut up from sight. 
Love ! is there sorrow hidden ? 

Is there delight? 
Is joy thy dower, or grief? 
White rose of weary leaf! 
Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light ! 

Soft snows, that hard winds harden 
Till each flake bite. 



294 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 

Fill all the flowerless garden 
Whose flowers took flight 
Long since, when summer ceased, 
And men rose up from feast, 
And warm West wind grew East, and warm day night. 



*' Come snow, come wind, or thunder 
High up in air, 
I watch my face and wonder 

At my bright hair : 
Nought else exalts or grieves 
The rose at heart, that heaves 
With love of her own leaves and lips that pair. 

" She knows not loves that kiss'd her 
She knows not where : 
Art thou the ghost ? my sister ! — 

White sister there ! 
Am I the ghost ? — who knows ? 
My hand, a fallen rose. 
Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care. 

" I can not see what pleasures 
Or what pains were ; 
What pale new loves and treasures 

New years will bear ; 
What beam will fall, what shower ; 
W^hat grief or joy for dower : 
But one thing knows the flower, — the flower is fair." 



Glad, but not flush'd with gladness, 

Since joys go by, — 
Sad, but not bent with sadness. 

Since sorrows die, — 
Deep in the gleaming glass 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 295 

She sees all past things pass, 
And all sweet life that was lie down, and lie. 

There glowing ghosts of flowers 

Draw down, draw nigh ; 
And wings of swift spent hours 

Take flight and fly ; 
She sees by formless gleams, 
She hears across cold streams, 
Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh. 

Face fallen and white throat lifted. 

With sleepless eye 
She sees old loves that drifted, 

She knew not why ; — 
Old loves and faded fears 
Float down a stream that hears 
The flowing of all men's tears beneath the sky. 

CHORUS. 

When the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces. 

The Mother of Months in meadow or plain 

Fills the shadows and windy places 

With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain ; 

And the brown bright nightingale amorous 

Is half assuaged for Itylus, 

For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, 

The tongue-less vigil, and all the pain. 

Come, wdth bows bent and with emptying of quivers, 

Maiden most perfect ! Lady of Light ! 

With a noise of winds and many rivers, 

With a clamour of waters, and with might : 

Bind on thy sandals, O Thou most fleet ! 

Over the splendour and speed of thy feet : 

For the faint East quickens, the wan West shivers. 

Round the feet of the Day and the feet of the Night. 



296 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 

Where shall we find her ? how shall we sing to her, 

Fold our hands round her knees, and cling ? 

O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, 

Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring ! 

For the stars and the winds are unto her 

As raiment, as songs of the harp-player : 

For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her. 

And the Southwest-wind and the West-wind sing. 

For Winter's rains and ruins are over, 
And all the season of snows and sins ; 
The days dividing lover and lover ; 
The light that loses, the night that wins ; 
And time remember'd is grief forgotten ; 
And frosts are slain, and flowers begotten; 
And in green underwood and cover 
Blossom by blossom the Spring begins. 

The full streams feed on flower of rushes ; 
Ripe grasses trammel a traveling foot ; 
The faint fresh flame of the young year flushes 
From leaf to flower and flower to fruit ; 
/ And fruit and leaf are as gold and fire ; 
^ ! And the oat is heard above the lyre ; 

And the hoofed heel of a satyr crushes 
The chestnut husk at the chestnut root. 

And Pan by noon, and Bacchus by night, 
Fleeter of foot than the fleet-foot kid, 
Follows with dancing, and fills with delight 
The Maenad and the Bassarid ; 
And, soft as lips that laugh and hide. 
The laughing leaves of the trees divide, 
And screen from seeing and leave in sight 
The God pursuing, the Maiden hid. 

The ivy falls with the Bacchanal's hair 
Over her eyebrows, hiding her eyes ; 



ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 297 

The wild vine slipping down leaves bare 

Her bright breast shortening into sighs ; 

The wild vine slips with the weight of its leaves, 

But the berried ivy catches and cleaves 

To the limbs that glitter, the feet that scare 

The wolf that follows, the fawn that flies. 



THE SUNDEW. j 

A little marsh-plant, yellow green, 1 

And prick'd at lip with tender red ! \ 

Tread close, and either way you tread 1 

Some faint black water jets between, 1 

Lest you should bruise the curious head. ' 

A live thing, may be : who shall know ? 

The Summer knows, and suffers it : ; 

For the cool moss is thick and sweet 

Each side, and saves the blossom so 

That it lives out the long June heat. 

The deep scent of the heather burns j 

About it ; breathless though it be. 
Bow down and worship ! more than we 
Is the least flower whose life returns, 
Least weed renascent in the sea. 

We are vex'd and cumber'd in Earth's sight , 

With wants, with many memories : - 

These see their Mother what she is, — ; 

Glad-growing, till August leave more bright J 

The apple-colour'd cranberries. \ 

Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass. 

Blown all one way to shelter it \ 

From trample of stray 'd kine (with feet i 

Felt heavier than the moor-hen was), ' 

Stray'd up past patches of wild wheat. I 



298 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 

You call it Sundew : how it grows, ; 

If with its colour it have breath, ^ 

If life taste sweet to it, if death \ 

Pain its soft petal, no man knows : i 

Man has no sight nor sense that saith. » | 

1 

My Sundew! grown of gentle days, j 

In these green miles the Spring begun ] 
Thy growth ere April had half done 
With the soft secret of her ways, 

Or June made ready for the Sun. i. 

\ 

red-lipp'd mouth of marsh-flower! [ 

1 have a secret halved with thee : ' 
The name that is love's name to me : 
Thou knowest, and the face of Her j 
Who is my festival to see. | 

The hard sun, as thy petals knew, ; 

Colour'd the heavy moss-water : — ^ 

Thou wert not worth green midsummer , 

Nor fit to live to August blue, ] 

O Sundew ! not remembering Her. j 

RONDEL. ; 

These many years, since we began to be, \ 

What have the Gods done with us ? what with me, • 
What with my love ? They have shown me fates and fears, \ 

Harsh springs, and fountains bitterer than the sea, | 

Grief a fix'd star, and joy a vane that veers, . \ 

These many years. I 

With her, my Love, — with her have they done well ? ' 

But who shall answer for her ? who shall tell \ 
Sweet things or sad, such things as no man hears? 

May no tears fall, if no tears ever fell, | 

From eyes more dear to me than starriest spheres, j 

These many years ! } 



JAMES THOMSON. 299 

But if tears ever touch'd, for any grief, 
Those eyelids folded like a white-rose leaf, 
Deep double shells where through the eye-flower peers, 
Let them weep once more only, sweet and brief, 
Brief tears and bright, for One who gave her tears 
These many years ! 



JAMES THOMSON. 
1834— 1882. 



THE THREE THA T SHALL BE ONE. 

Love, on the earth alit 

(Come to be Lord of it), 

Look'd round and laugh'd with glee : 

Noble my empery ! 

Straight ere that laugh was done 

Sprang forth the royal sun, 

Pouring out golden shine 

Over the realm divine. 

Came then a lovely May, 
Dazzling the new-born day, 
Wreathing her golden hair 
With the red roses there. 
Laughing with sunny eyes 
Up to the sunny skies. 
Moving so light and free 
To her own minstrelsy. 

Love with swift rapture cried — 
Dear Life ! thou art my bride : 
Whereto with fearless pride — 
Dear Love ! indeed thy bride : 
All the earth's fruit and flowers, 
All the world's wealth, are ours; 



300 JAMES THOMSON. 

Sun, moon, and stars, gem 
Our marriage diadem. 

So they together fare. 

Lovely and joyous pair ! 

So hand in hand they roam 

All through their Eden home. 

Each to the other's sight 

An ever-new delight : 

Blue heaven and blooming earth 

Joy in their darlings' mirth. 

Who comes to meet them now ? 
She with the pallid brow. 
Wreathing her night-dark hair 
With the red poppies there, 
Pouring from solemn eyes 
Gloom through the sunny skies, 
Moving so silently 
In her deep reverie. 

Life paled as she drew near. 

Love shook with doubt and fear. 

Ah, then (she said) in truth 

(Eyes full of yearning ruth) 

Love ! thou wouldst have this Life, 

Fair May, to be thy wife ? 

Yet at an awful shrine 

Wert thou not plighted mine ? 

Pale, paler poor Life grew ; 
Love murmur'd — It is true ! 
How could I thee forsake ? 
From the brief dream I wake. 
Yet, O beloved Death ! 
See how She suffereth : 
Ere we from earth depart, 
Soothe her, thou Tender-Heart ! 



JAMES THOMSON. 3OI 

Faint on the ground she lay : 
Love kiss'd her swoon away ; 
Death then bent over her, 
Death the sweet comforter! 
Whisper'd with tearful smile — 
Wait but a little while ! 
Then I will come for thee : 
We are one family. 



WAITTISTG. 

O, what are you waiting for here ? young man ! 
What are you looking for over the bri<ige ? — 
*' A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons 
Is soon to come dancing over the bridge. 

*' Her heart beats the measure that keeps her feet dancing, 
Dancing along like a wave o' the sea ; 

Her heart pours the sunshine with which her eyes glancin^ 
Light up strange faces, in looking for me. 

" The strange faces brighten in meeting her glances ; 
The strangers all bless her, pure, lovely, and free; 
She fancies she walks, but her walk skips and dances, 
Her heart makes such music in coming to me. 

'' O, thousands and thousands of happy young maidens 
Are tripping this morning their sweethearts to see : 
But none whose heart beats to a sweeter love-cadence 
Than hers who will brighten the sunshine for me." 

O what are you waiting for here ? young man ! 
What are you looking for over the bridge ? — 
*' A little straw hat with the streaming blue ribbons." 
— And here it comes dancing over the bridge. 



302 JOHN HAY. 

JOHN HAY. 

1839- 



A WOMAN'S LOVE. 

A sentinel angel sitting high in glory- 
Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory : — 
Have mercy, mighty angel ! hear my story. 

I loved, — and, blind with passionate love, I fell. 
Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell 
For God is just, and death for sin is well. 

I do not rage against His high decree. 
Nor for myself do ask that grace shall be ; 
But for my Love on earth, who mourns for me. 

Great Spirit ! let me see my Love again, 
And comfort him one hour, and I were fain 
To pay a thousand years of fire and pain ! " 

Then said the pitying angel — " Nay ! repent 
That wild vow : look ! the dial-finger's bent 
Down to the last hour of thy punishment." 

But still she wail'd — " I pray thee let me go ! 
I can not rise to peace and leave him so : 
O, let me soothe him in his bitter woe ! " 

The brazen gates ground sullenly ajar, 
And upward, joyous, like a rising star, 
She rose and vanish'd in the ether far. 

But soon adown the dying sunset sailing, 
And like a wounded bird her pinions trailing, 
She flutter'd back, with broken-hearted wailing. 



HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON. 303 

She sobb'd — '' I found him by the summer sea 

RecHned, his head upon a maiden's knee, — 

She curl'd his hair and kiss'd him. Woe is me ! " 

She wept : '^ Now let my punishment begin ! 
I have been fond and foolish. Let me in 
To expiate my sorrow and my sin ! " 

The angel answer'd — " Nay, sad soul ! go higher ! 
To be deceived in your true heart's desire 
Was bitterer than a thousand years of fire." 



HENRY AUSTIN DOBSON. 

1840— 



BEFORE SEDAN. 

Here in this leafy place 

Quiet he lies. 
Cold, with his sightless face 
. Turn'd to the skies : 
'Tis but another dead : 
All you can say is said. 

Carry his body hence ! 

Kings must have slaves : 
Kings climb to eminence 

Over men's graves : 
So this man's eye is dim ; — 
Throw the earth over him ! 

What was the white you toucli'd. 

There, at his side ? 
Paper his hand had clutch'd 

Tight ere he died : 
Message or wish, may be : 
Smooth the folds out and see ! 



304 ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN. 

Hardly the worst of us 

Here could have smiled I 
Only the tremulous 

Words of a child : 
Prattle that has for stops 
Just a few ruddy drops. 

Look ! — " She is sad to miss, 

Morning and night, 
His (her dead father's) kiss ; 

Tries to be bright, 
Good to Mamma, and sweet : " 
(That is all)—'' Marguerite." 

Ah ! if beside the dead 

Slumber'd the pain : 
Ah ! if the hearts that bled 

Slept with the slain : 
If the grief died : — but no ! 
Death will not have it so. 



ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN. 
1841— 



THE MODERN WARRIOR. 

O Warrior for the Right ! 
Though thy shirt of mail be white 

As the snows upon the breast of The Adored, 
Though the weapon thou mayst claim 
Hath been temper'd in the flame 

Of the fire upon the Altar of the Lord, 
Ere the coming of the night 
Thy mail shall be less bright, 

And the taint of sin may settle on the sword. 



ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN. 305 

For the foemen thou must meet 

Are the phantoms in the street, 
And thine armour shall be foul'd in many a place, 

And the shameful mire and mud 

With a grosser stain than blood 
Shall be scatter'd 'mid the fray upon thy face ; 

And the helpless thou dost aid 

Shall shrink from thee, dismay'd, 
Till thou comest to the knowledge of things base. 

Ah, mortal ! with a brow 

Like the gleam of sunshine, thou 
Mayst wander from the pathway in thy turn ; 

In the noontide of thy strength 

Be stricken down at length, 
And cry to God for aid, and live, and learn : 

And when with many a stain 

Thou arisest up again. 
The lightning of thy look will be less stern. 

Thou shalt see with humbler eye 

The adulteress go by. 
Nor shudder at the touch of her attire ; 

Thou shalt only look with grief 

On the liar and the thief ; 
Thou shalt meet the very murtherer in the mire : 

And to which wouldst thou accord, 

O thou Warrior of the Lord ! 
The vengeance of the Sword and of the Fire ? 

Nay ! batter'd in the fray, 

Thou shalt quake in act to slay, 
And remember thy transgression and be meek ! 

And the thief shall grasp thy hand, 

And the liar blushing stand, 
And the harlot if she list shall kiss thy cheek ; 

And the murtherer, unafraid, 

II.— 20 



306 ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN. 

Shall meet thee in the shade 
And pray thee for the doom thou wilt not wreak. 

Yet shalt thou help the frail 

From the phantoms that assail, — 
Yea ! the strong man in his anger shalt thou dare ; 

Thy voice shall be a song 

Against Wickedness and Wrong, 
But the wicked and the wronger thou wilt spare. 

And, while thou lead'st the van, 

The ungrateful hand of man 
Shall smite thee down and slay thee unaware. 

With an agonized cry 

Thou shalt shiver down, and die, 
With stained shirt of mail and broken brand ; 

And the voice of men shall call — 

" He has fallen like us all, 
Though the weapon of the Lord was in his hand : " 

And thine epitaph shall be — 

''He was wretched even as we ; " 
And thy tomb may be unhonour'd in the land. 

But the basest of the base 

Shall bless thy pale dead face ; 
And the thief shall steal a bloody lock of hair : 

And over thee asleep 

The adulteress shall weep 
Such tears as she can never shed elsewhere, 

Shall bless the broken brand 

In thy chill and nerveless hand. 
Shall kiss thy stained vesture, with a prayer. 

Then, while in that chill place 
Stand the basest of the base 
Gather'd round thee in the silence of the dark, 
A white Face shall look down 
On the silence of the town 



ROBERT BRIDGES. 307 

And see thee lying dead, with those to mark; 

And a Voice shall fill the air — 

" Bear my Warrior lying there 
To his sleep upon my Breast ! " and they shall hark. 

Lo ! then those fallen things 
Shall perceive a riish of wings 

Growing nearer down the azure gulf untrod ; 
And around them in the night 
There shall grow a wondrous light, 

While they hide affrighted faces on the sod : 
But ere again 'tis dark 
They shall raise their eyes, and mark 

White arms that waft the Warrior up to God. 



ROBERT BRIDGES. 

1844— 



THE SEA- POPPY. 

A Poppy grows upon the shore 
Bursts her twin cup in summer late : 
Her leaves are glaucous green and hoar, 
Her petals yellow, delicate. 

Oft to her cousins turns her thought. 
In wonder if they care that she 
Is fed with spray for dew, and caught 
By every gale that sweeps the sea. 

She has no lovers like the Red 
That dances with the noble Corn : 
Her blossoms on the waves are shed. 
Where she sits shiverin"; and forlorn. 



308 EDMUND WILLIAM GOSSE. 

EDxMUND WILLIAM GOSSE. 

1849— 



THE SUPPLIANT. 
Beneath the poplars o'er the sacred pool 
The halcyons dart like rays of azure light : 
Fair presage ! By the columns white and cool 
I'll watch to-night. 

Perchance the Goddess, at the twilight's breath, 
Will come with silver feet and braidless hair 
And, all too startled to decree my death, 
Will hearken to my prayer. 

So when at moon-rise by the farm I go, 
The lovely girl who near the fig-tree stands 
May turn no more on scornful feet and slow, 
But hold out both her hands. 

THEOPHILE MARZIALS. 

1850— 



RONDEL. 
To-day what is there in the air 
That makes December seem sweet May ? 
There are no swallows anywhere. 
Nor crocuses to crown your hair 
And hail you down my garden way. 
Last night the full moon's frozen stare 
Struck me, perhaps ; or did you say 
Really — you'd come, sweet Friend and fair ! 

To-day ? 
To-day is here : come ! crown to-day 
With Spring's delight or Spring's despair ! 
Love can not bide old Time's delay : — 
Down my glad gardens light winds play. 
And my whole soul shall bloom and bear 

To-day. 



ANDREW LANG. 3O9 

PAKENHAM THOMAS BEATTY. 

1855— 



IN MY DREAMS. 

Come to me in my dreams, and say- 
Sweet words I never hear by day, 
And murmur lovingly and low, 
And take my hand and kiss my brow ! 

And I will whisper all night through 
What I can only say to you : 
My hopes I had, my life I plann'd, 
That only you can understand. 

Rest with me. Love ! until the day ; 
Then kiss me once, and pass away ! 
And let me waken. Dear ! to weep, 
You can but kiss me in my sleep. 

ANDREW LANG. 



1844- J! 



IN ITHACA. 

'Tis thought Odysseus, when the strife was o'er 

With all the waves and wars, a weary while. 

Grew restless in his disenchanted isle. 

And still would watch the sunset, from the shore. 

Go down the waves of gold ; and evermore 

His sad heart foUow'd after, mile on mile, 

Back to the Goddess of the magic wile — 

Calypso, and the love that was of yore. 

Thou too, thy haven gain'd, must turn thee yet 

To look across the sad and stormy space. 

Years of a youth as bitter as the sea. 

Ah ! with a heavy heart and eyelids wet : 

Because within a fair forsaken place 

The life that might have been is lost to thee. 



310 WILLIAM DAVIES. i 

1 

WILLIAM DAVIES. ] 

1829— 



DOING AND BEING. 

Think not alone to do right and fulfil 

Life's due perfection by the simple worth 

Of lawful actions call'd by justice forth, 

And thus condone a world confused with ill ! 

But fix the high condition of thy will 

To be right, that its good's spontaneous birth 

May spread like flowers springing from the earth 

On which the natural dews of heaven distil ! 

For these require no honours, take no care 

For gratitude from men, — but more are bless'd 

In the sweet ignorance that they are fair ; 

And through their proper functions live and rest, 

Breathing their fragrance on the joyous air, 

Content with praise of bettering what is best. 



NOTES. 



Wordsworth. BornatCockermouth, Cumberland. Wordsworth be- 
longs to the close of the eighteenth century as well as to half of the nine- 
teenth. His Evening Walk was written in 1793 ; his Lyrical Ballads v,'qxq 
published in 1798. Peter Bell also was written in 1798, though not pub- 
lished till 1815. Nature's Darling bears date of 1799 ; the Ode to 
Duty, 1805 ; the Invocation to the Power of Sound and the 
Triad, 1828 ; the Sonnet—" Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne," 
1836. Of his two longest poems, the Excursioji came out in 1814; the 
Prelude, begun in his early days, was not published till after his death. 

In later editions of the Ode to Duty the last two lines of the second 
stanza read as follows : 

O, if through confidence misplaced 
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power ! around them cast ! 

Coleridge, "logician, metaphysician, and bard, "as Lamb calls him, 
born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, belongs almost wholly to the eigh- 
teenth century, little of his poetry being written later, except in 1814-16 
the tragedy of Zapolya. Christabel, first printed in 1816, had been mainly 
written in 1797. So also Remorse, a tragedy, acted in 1813. The Rime 
of the Ancient Mariner was printed with Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads., 
1798 ; and in 1798-1800 he translated from Schiller"s MSS., for simultane- 
ous publication in Germany and England, the Piccolomini and Death of 
Wallenstein, which Carlyle praised as " the best translation from Ger- 
man then produced, except Sotheby's Oberqn." Genevieve may be 
taken as of his earliest, the poems at pp. 24, 25, as of his latest writing. 

Genevieve is only part of the poem as originally written for introduc- 
tion to a longer poem never completed. Coleridge himself struck out 
some stanzas at the beginning and end, and published it as a complete 



312 NOTES. 

poem, on Love, in its present form. One stanza, that beginning " And 
how he cross'd — " (p. 21), seems to have been inadvertently dropped, and 
is omitted from the usual copies. 

SOUTHEY, born at Bristol, had also written before 1800 : Joan of Arc, 
Wat Tyler, and many minor poems. Thalaba the Destroyer is dated 
1800; Madoc, 1805. The Curse of Kehama was begun in 1801 and fin- 
ished in 1809 ; and Roderick, the last of the Goths, begun in 1809 and 
finished in 1814. These are his principal works, qi4asi epics (except Wat 
Tyler) : all of weight and considerable worth. The Holly Tree was 
written in 1798 ; the Scholar in 1818. 

Tannahill. a Scottish minor poet. The " Lake poets" have been 
kept together partly on account of their early work before the present 
century: so Tannahill may follow, his poems being chiefly of the same 
date. He was dead before Hogg, born two years earlier, had done any- 
thing of mark. 

Gart is forced, compelled ; tine — lose ; dowie — doleful ; a' my lane — all 
alone ; dajin — ^joking ; short syne — a short time ago ; aboon — above ; 
7vai7''d — spent; coft — bought; fa — fall; gowden — golden; gloaming — twi- 
light. 

Scott (Sir Walter). Born at Edinburgh. The Poet preceded the 
Novelist. The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (with some ballads by 
himself) was published in 1802 ; the Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805 ; Mar- 
mi on, 1808 ; Lady of the Lake, 1810 ; Vision of Dofi Roderick^ 1811 ; 
Rokeby and the Bridal of Triermain, 1813; Lord of the Isles, 1814. In 
1814 appeared Waverley, the first of the novels. 

The Pibroch of Donuil Dhu was written for Campbell's Albyn An- 
thology in 1816 ; Jock o' Hazeldean also, except the first stanza, which 
"is ancient." Light Love will be found in Rokeby; the Death- 
Chant in Guy Mannering ; and Proud Maisie in the Heart of Mid- 
Lothian. 

Loot is let ; birn — lightning. 

Montgomery. Another Scottish-born poet. His lengthier poems are 
the Wanderer in Szvitzerland, 1806; the World before the Flood^ 1812 ; 
Greenland, 1819 ; the Pelican Island, 1828. He wrote also Songs and 
Hymns. As Editor of the Sheffield Iris he was in 1795 imprisoned for 
" seditious " writing. 



NOTES. 313 

Hogg. The " Ettrick Shepherd." Born at Ettrick in Selkirkshire, 
and in early life a shepherd and farmer laborer. Though so closely fol- 
lowing Scott in order of birth, his poems are of later date. The first in 
time and importance is his Queen s Wake^ 1813, not written till he was 
forty years of age. He wrote afterward the Pilgri7ns of the Sun ; Queen 
Hyndc ; and numerous short pieces and songs ; took part with Professor 
Wilson in the Nodes Ambrosiance of Blackwood's Magazine ; and in 1819 
and 1821 edited a collection of " Jacobite Relics." 

The laverock is the lark. 

Tamb. Born in London. Besides the Essays of Elia and other prose 
works, he wrote a few poems : some printed with those of Coleridge in 
1797 ; John Woodvil, a tragedy, 1802 ; the Wife's Trial, 1828 ; Albutn 
Verses, 1830, 

Landor. Born at Ipsley House, Warwickshire. The magnificence 
of Landor's prose works has overshadowed the excellence of his poetry, 
ranging over nearly three-quarters of a century. Besides his most poetic 
prose, — the Imaginary Conversations, the Citation and Exami'natiofi of 
Shakespeare (which Lamb said " only two men could have written "), 
Pericles and Aspasia, and the Pentatneron, — he wrote an epic poem in 
seven books, Gebir, in 1797; a tragedy, Coiint Julian, in 1811 ; in later 
time Hellenics, Heroic Idylls^ Dramatic Scenes ; and short poems and 
epigrams down to the very close of life, in his ninetieth year. 

Agen is a spelling insisted upon by him. 

Campbell. Born at Glasgow, but, like Montgomery, only for place 
of birth to be called a Scottish poet. The Pleasures of Hope appeared in 
1798 ; Gertrude of IVyoming in i8og ; Theodoric in 1824. The MARI- 
NERS OF England was written in 1800 ; the Battle of the Baltic 
commemorates the seizure in Copenhagen harbor, by Nelson, in 1807, 
of the Danish fleet, to prevent its being of service to Napoleon. 

Moore. Born in Dublin. Odes of Anacreon, 1800 ; Irish Melodies 
(and Songs to other national airs), from 1807 to 1834 ; Lalla Rookh, 
1817 ; Loves of the Angels, 1823. 

Smith (Horace or Horatio). Amaryitthus, the Aympholept, a pastoral 
drama, 1821 ; Gaieties and Gravities, 1825, He also had part with his 
brother James in Rejected Addresses, parodies of Wordsworth, Byron, 
and other contemporary poets. 



314 NOTES. 

Elliott. Bom near Rotherham in Yorkshire. Working at his 
father's foundry in early days, and afterward in business as an iron- 
monger in Sheffield. Chiefly known as the " Corn-law Rhymer," his 
rhymes having materially aided the popular movement in England for 
repeal of the bread-tax. His longer poems are the Vernal Walk, writ- 
ten in his seventeenth year, 1798 ; and the Village Patriarch, 1829. 

Leigh Hunt. Poet and Essayist, yuvenilia appeared in 1801 ; his 
most important poem, the Story of Rimini^ . in 1816. Besides many 
shorter poems, and translations, should be noted a very noble play, the 
Legend of Florence, written and acted in 1840. The Song of Peace is 
from the Descent of Liberty, a masque, written in 1814 while in prison 
(imprisoned for two years) for ridiculing the Prince Regent, afterward 
George the Fourth. The Grasshopper and Cricket (p. 63) was composed 
in competition with and at the same time as that by Keats, p. loi. 

Cunningham. In 1810 one Cromek published Remains of Nithsdale 
and Galloway Song, supposed to have been collected, but certainly much 
of it written, by Allan Cunningham, a Dumfries stone-mason. The song 
at page 65 Cromek gives as sent to him by a lady ; but Peter Cunning- 
ham claims it for his father, and the father printed it, with some varia- 
tions, in his collected works. It is hard to know certainly what is really 
and entirely his, as he was in the habit (as Burns was) of adapting and 
completing ancient fragments : this song therefore may be taken as his, 
but doubtfully. He is chiefly known for his Lives of British Painters. 

Darley. The Errors of Ecstasie, and other poems, 1822 ; Sylvia, or 
the May-Queen, a lyrical drama, 1827 ; Ethelstan and Becket, dramatic 
chronicles, 1840 and 1841. 

Peacock. Novelist, satirist, and poet. His poetry consists of Songs 
in his novels (^Headlong Hall, Maid Marian, Gryll Grange, etc.) ; Pal- 
myra, 1806; the Genius of the Thames, 1810; Rhododaphne^ along, learned, 
fanciful poem, 1818 (the year of Endymion) ; the Deceived, a comedy, 
1831 ; Paper-money Lyrics, 1837 ; and yElia Lcelia Crispis, 1862. 

Procter. Play-wright as well as writer of Songs. Better known by 
his pseudonym, " Barry Cornwall." Born in London. He published 
Dramatic Scenes in 1819 ; Marcian Colonna and Mirandola, plays, in 1820 
and 1821 ; the Flood of Thessaly, 1823 ; and English Songs, 1832, with 
additions in 1851. 



NOTES. 315 

Dana. Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Idle Man, 1821 ; 
The Buccayiier and Other Poems, 1827 ; Poems and Prose Writings, 1850. 

Byron. Bom in London. Hours of Idleness, 1807 ; English Bards 
a?id Scotch Reviewers, 1809 ; the first two cantos of Childe Harold, 1812 ; 
the third and fourth, 1816-17 ; metrical romances, — the Brtde of Abydos, 
Corsair, etc., Beppo, and Manfred, between 1813 and 1818 ; Martno Fali- 
ero, 1820 ; Heaven and Earth, Sardanapalus, the Two Foscari, and Caiti, 
in 1821. Don yuaji, his greatest work, was begun in 1818. 

The Isles of Greece from Don Juan; And Thou art Dead, one 
of several poems ''to Thyrza," written in 1812 ; the Song of Saul, the 
Patriot, and She Walks in Beauty, from Hebrew Melodies. Byron's 
Last Verse was written at Missolonghi on the 22d of January, 1824, 
within three months of his death. 

Shelley. Born at Field Place, Sussex. Queen Mab, 1813 ; Alastor, 
1816 ; Laon and Cythna (the Revolt of I slain)., 1817; Rosalind and Helen, 
1817-18 ; the Ceitci, the Masque of Anarchy, and Peter Bell the Third, 
1819 ; Promotheus Unbound, GEdipus Tyr annus {^Swell-foot the Tyrant), 
and the Witch of Atlas .^ 1820 ; Epipsychidion and Adonais, 1821 ; Charles 
the First (a.{ra.gment), 1821-22; Hellas, 1822. 

The different editions of Shelley (Forman's latest and best) have vari- 
ous readings of his poems, but not often so important as to justify de- 
parture from that issued by Mrs. Shelley. Allingham suggests pine, for 
fail (an evident misprint), in the second stanza of Lines to an Indian 
Air ; and surely strain should be taken instead of the usually printed 
stain in the Wail at page 92. In the song To-Night all the authorities 
have Day both male and female, probably following Shelley's careless 
manuscript. Rossetti suggests her for his in the third stanza ; but the 
alteration in the second stanza, in our text, seems preferable. Day being 
always male and Night female. In most, if not all, editions wrong punc- 
tuation destroys the poetic beauty and the sense of the first four lines of 
A Bridal Song, p. 90. 

Keats. Born in London. His first verse appeared in 1817. In 1818 
he published Endymio?t (in which are the Roundelay and Hymn to 
Pan, pp. 92, 94); and in the two following years Lamia, Isabella, the Eve 
of St. Agnes, his shorter poems, and the glorious fragment — Hyperion. 

Wolfe. Born in Dublin. He owes his immortality to this one poem : 
besides which he wrote only a few songs of little importance. 



3l6 NOTES. 

Sir John Moore, in command of the British army in Spain, in the war 
against Napoleon, was slain at the battle of Corunna, in 1809, when cov- 
ering the embarkation of his troops, in their retreat before Ney and 
Soult. In the last stanza but one sullenly is generally misprinted for sud- 
denly. Wolfe's manuscript has suddenly ; and in the account in the Edin- 
burgh Annual Register (which suggested the poem) we find it stated that 
the burial " was hastened, for about eight in the morning some firing was 
heard," — a renewed attack feared. 

Hemans. Felicia Dorothea Browne, afterward Mrs. Hemans, was 
born at Liverpool. Between 1803 and 1835 she wrote numerous poems, 
graceful and musical, if not of high imagination or intellectuality : his- 
toric poems on Welsh, Greek, Spanish themes; two dramas, the Siege of 
Valencia and the Vespers of Palermo : Sce7ies and Hy7mis of Life ; Songs 
of the Affections ; translations from Horace ; etc., etc. 

Bryant. Born at Cummington, Massachusetts. The Embargo, 1809 ; 
The Ages^ 1821 ; Poems, 1832 ; The Fountain and Other Poems, 1842 ; The 
White-Footed Deer and Other Poems, 1844 ; Poems, 1846 ; Letters of a 
Traveller, 1850; Thirty Poems, 1863 ; Letters from the East, 1859 ; Tra?is- 
lation of the Iliad, 1870; Trajislation of the Odyssey, 1871-72. 

Carlyle, Some few slight verses were written by the great historian 
and essayist. 

Reynolds, Hood's brother-in-law. The author of Peter Bell the Sec- 
ond, making fun of Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, in the same year as 
and seemingly suggestive of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third, a profounder 
and more elaborate criticism, serious though jocose. He wrote also the 
Garde?i of Florence, with other poems, " by John Hamilton," 1821. 

Coleridge (Hartley), eldest son of the Poet, wrote a number of minor 
poems, published in 1833. 

Motherwell, Born at Glasgow. Poems, lyrical and narrative, 
1832-3. In 1827 he edited Ancient and Modern Minstrelsy (a collection). 

Beltane — May-day ; Yule — Christmas ; blinks — glances ; ae laigh bink — 
one low seat ; leir ilk ither lear — teach each other ; /lO^y— palm ; brent — 
burn'd ; weans — children ; <:/^^^'^— hook'd, clung ; skailt — dispersed ; 
speel — climb ; hinnied — honey'd ; simmer — summer ; deavin — deafening ; 
croon — murmur ; whusslit — whistled ; kjiowe — knoll ; abune or aboon — 
above ; ^ra/— wept ; gin—\i ; grit—{u\\. 



NOTES. 317 

Hood. Born in London. Great not only as a humorist, but also as a 
serious poet, though not so recognized until the appearance of his Soiig 
of the Shirt m. Punch, in 1843, barely two years before his death. The 
Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (with Hero and Leander, Lyctcs the Cen- 
taur, and other poems) was printed in 1827. Tylney Hall^ a novel (in 
which our poem of Constancy), came out in 1834; Miss Kilmanscgg- 
and her Golden Leg, a serio-comic poem, in 1840 ; the Haunted House and 
the Bridge of Sighs in 1844. 

Wells. The friend of Keats. Author of Joseph and his Brethren, a 
Scriptural drama, published with the pseudonym of " Howard," in 1824, 
republished in 1876. He wrote also poetical-prose Stories after Nature, 
in one of which is the SONG at page 124. 

Taylor (Sir Henry). Dramatist. His principal work is Philip Van 
Artevelde, an historical play, published in 1834. His other plays are 
Isaac Comnenus, Edwin the Fair, A Sicilian Smnmer (called in the first 
edition the Virgi?i Widow), and *SV. Clc?nefit's Eve. 

Barnes. The Rev. William Barnes, a Dorsetshire clergyman, is au- 
thor of some three or four hundred, or more, poems of rural life, in the 
Dorset dialect, and others in common English. 

Newman. John Henry, Cardinal Newman. Verses on several oc- 
casions, 1868. The Elements, p. 127, written in 1833 ; A Voice from 
afar, 1829. 

Martineau. This single hymn and a song in one of her tales may 
entitle Harriet Martineau to a corner in our anthologies. 

Beddoes. The son of Dr. Beddoes (physician) and nephew of Maria 
Edgeworlh. He published the Improvisatore in 1821 and the Bride s 
Tragedy in 1822. Death's Jest Book, or the Fool's Tragedy, the Second 
Brother and Torrismond (unfinished dramas), dramatic fragments and 
poems, were printed after his death. 

HORNE. Poet, dramatist, and prose writer. He has published, — in 
1835, the Death of Marlowe, a tragedy in one act ; in 1837, Cosmo de' Me- 
dici, a tragedy ; in 1840, Gregory the Seventh, a tragedy, and the Death- 
Fetch ; in 1843, Orion, an epic poem ; in 1846, Ballad Roinances ; in 1864, 
Prometheus the Fire-Bringer (written in Australia); in 1880, Laura Di- 



3l8 NOTES. 

balzo, a tragedy; and in 1881, yohn the Baptist, Rahman (Job's Wife), 
and jfudas Iscariot — a miracle play. He has also very extensively con- 
tributed to the magazines and other periodical publications. 

Emerson. Born at Boston, Massachusetts, Nature, 1836 ; Essays 
and Lectures, First Series, 1840 ; Essays and Lectures^ Second Series, 
1844 ; Poems, 1846 ; Miscellanies, 1849 ; Representative Men, 1850 ; Eng- 
lish Traits, 1856 ; The Conduct of Life, i860 ; May Day and Other Poems, 
1867; Solitude ajid Society, 1870; Prose Works^ 1870. 

Griffin. One of the "Young Ireland" party of 1842-48, and con- 
tributor to the Irish Nation of those years. Born at Limerick. He wrote 
in his twentieth year his drama of Gisippus, put on the stage by Ma- 
cready in 1842. His poetical works were published in 1851. He is more 
generally known as a novelist of merit. 

Mangan. Another Irish poet of the Young Ireland time. Born in 
Dublin. Of genius similar to that of Poe. His poems are free transla- 
tions (rather new poetic renderings from prose translations) of early 
Irish ; translations from the German ; and original contributions to the 
Nation and the United Irishman. His collected works, original and 
translated, were published in New York in 1859. 

Blanchard. a bright essayist and writer of society verses. Lyric 
Offerings, 1828. 

Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow in Cornwall, published Tendrils of 
Reuben (juvenile poems) in 1821 ; Records of the Western Shore in 1832 ; 
the Quest of the San Graal in 1864. 

Isha Cherioth is the Cherioth woman, or maiden. 

Adams. Mrs. Adams, the daughter of Benjamin Flower, Editor of the 
Cambridge Intelligencer (one of the first liberal newspapers in England), 
and wife of William Bridges Adams, notable as a civil engineer and po- 
litical writer. She wrote Vivia Perpetua, a drama, 1841 ; anti-corn-law 
rhymes, contemporaneously with Elliott ; and Hymns (set to music by 
her sister, Eliza Flower) for the Unitarian religious services conducted 
by W. J. Fox at South Place, Finsbury, London. 

Hamilton. Mathematician, and astronomer-royal for Ireland. Born 
in Dublin. 



NOTES. 319 

Wade, Author of the ynv of Arragoti, a tragedy brought out by- 
Charles Kemble in 1830 ; Woman's Love, a comedy, 1828 ; Mundi et 
Cordis Carmi7ia (Songs of the Universe and the Heart), 1835 ; the Con- 
tention of Death and Love, Helena, and the Shadow-Seeker, 1837 ; Pro- 
ihaftasia, 1839. 

Sterling. Born in the Isle of Bute. Minor Poems, 1Z29; The Elec- 
tion, 1841 ; Strafford, a drama, 1843. 
Daedalus is the type of inventive genius. 

SIMMS. Born at Charleston, South Carolina. A voluminous writer of 
poems, plays, stories, romances, histories, biographies, and criticisms, 
his works numbering upward of sixty different titles. His poetical 
writings are : Lyrical and Other Poems, 1827 ; Early Lays, x^-2'j ; The 
Vision of Cortes aiid other Poems, 1829 ; The Tri-Color, or Three Days 
of Bloody 1830 ; Atala?ttis, a Drama of the Sea, 1832 ; Southern Passages 
and Pictures, 1839 ; Donna Florida, a Tale, 1843 ; Grouped Thoughts and 
Scattered Fancies, 1845 ; Areytos ; or. Songs of the South, 1846 ; Songs of 
the Palmetto, 1848 ; The Eye and the Wing, 1848 ; The City of the Silent, 
1850 ; Poems, 1854. 

Willis. Born at Portland, Maine. One of the most accomplished 
and versatile of American authors, magazinists, and journalists. His 
principal poetical writings are : Sketches, 1827 ; Fugitive Poetry, 1829 ; 
Melanie and Other Poems, 1835 ; Tortesa the Usurer, 1839 ; Biattca Vis- 
conti, 1839 ; The Lady Jane and Other Poeins, 1844. 

Longfellow. Born at Portland, Maine. The most popular writer 
of English verse in the nineteenth century. Coplas de Manrique, a trans- 
lation from the Spanish, 1833 ; Outre-Mer, a Pilgriinage beyoftd the Sea, 
1835 ; Hyperion, a Romance, 1839 ; Voices of the Night, 1839 ; Ballads and 
Other Poems, 1841 ; Poems on Slavery, 1842 ; The Spanish Student, 1843 ; 
The Waif, a Collection of Poems, 1845 ; The Poets and Poetry of Europe, 
1845 ; The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems, 18^6 ; The Estray, a Col- 
lection of Poems, 1847 ; Evafigcline, a Tale of Acadie, 1847 ; Kavanagh, a 
Tale, 1849 ; The Seaside and the Fireside, 1850 ; The Golden Legend, 1851 ; 
The Song of Hiawatha, 1855 ; The Courtship of Miles Standish, 1858 ; 
Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863 ; Flower -de- Luce, 1867 ; The New England 
Tragedies, 1868 ; Translation of Dante s Divine Comedy, 1867-70 ; The 
Divi?ie Tragedy, 1872 ; Chrisius, a Mystery, 1872 ; Three Books of Song, 
1872 ; Aftermath, 1874 ; The Masque of Pandora, 1875 ; Keramos and 
Other Poems, 1878 ; Ultima Thule, 1S80 ; Michael Angclo, a Tragedy, 1883. 



320 NOTES. 

Whittier. Born at Haverhill, Massachusetts. A grave and earnest 
thinker, whose inspiration is largely drawn from moral and political ques- 
tions, and with whom poetry is a passion, not an art. The following 
are his principal works : Legetids of New England, 1831 ; Moll Pitcher, 
1831 ; Mogg Megonc, 1836 ; Lays of My Home, and Other Poems, 1843 ; 
The Bridal of Pcnnacook, 1848 ; Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, 
1849 ; The Voices of Freedom, 1849 ; Songs of Labor and Other Poems, 
1850; Old Portraits and Modern Sketches, 1850; The Chapel of the Her- 
mits, 1853 ; The Panorama and Other Poems, 1856 ; Home Ballads and 
Other Poems, i860 ; In War Time and Other Poems, 1863 ; Snow- Bound, 
a Winter Idyl, 1866 ; The Tent on the Beach and Other Poems, 1867 ; 
Among the Hills and Other Poems^ 1868 ; Miriam and Other Poems, 1870 ; 
The Pentisylvania Pilgrim and Other Poems, 1872 ; The Vision of Echard 
and Other Poems, 1878 ; The King's Missive atid Other Poetns, 1881 ; The 
Bay of Seven Islands and Other Poems, 1883. 



Trench. Archbishop of Dublin. Justin Marty' and other poems, 
1835; Honor Ncale, 1838; Genoveva, 1842; Sacred Poems, 1846; Alma 
and other poems, 1855. 

POE. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of strolling players, he 
was lavishly, if not wisely, indulged by his adoptive father. A reckless 
student and a cashiered cadet, he wrote melodious verses and ghastly 
stories : edited the Southern Literary Messenger and Graham' s Magazine, 
made enemies by writing captious criticisms about his brother authors, 
and was himself his own worst enemy. " The rest is silence. " Tamar- 
lane a7id Other Poems, i^'Z'j ; Al Araaf Tamarlatte and Minor Poems, 
1829 ; Poems, 1831 ; The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, 1838 ; Tales 
of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1839; Poems, 1845; Eureka, 1848. 



Holmes. Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts. A witty and ingenu- 
ous writer in verse and prose, he was educated as a physician, and filled 
for thirty-five years the chair of Anatomy and Physiology in the Medical 
School attached to Harvard College. His non-professional writings are 
Poems, 1836 ; Urattia, a Rhymed Lesson, 1842 ; Astrea^ The Balance of 
Illusions, 1850; The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, Y^s"^; The Profes- 
sor at the Breakfast- Table, 1859 ; Elsie Venncr, A Ro7nance of Destiny, 
1861 ; Songs iti Many Keys, 1861 ; The Guardian. Afigcl, 1867 ; The Poet 
at the Breakfast-Table, 1873; Songs of Many Seasons, 1874; The Iron 
Gate and other Poems, j88o. 



NOTES. 321 

Tennyson. His first verse in Poems by two Brothers (Alfred and 
Charles). Poems chiefly lyrical, 2 vols., 1830; with additions in 1832, 
and again in 1840 to 1846 ; the Princess, 1847 ; with the Songs, 1S50 ; In 
Memoriam, 1850 ; Maud, 1855 ; Idylls of the King, part published in 1859, 
completed in 1872; Enoch Arden, 1864; Lucretius, 1868; Queen Mary, 
1875 ; Harold, 1877. 

MiLNES. Historical Poems, 1835 ; Poems of Many Years, 1838 ; Poetry 
for the People, 1840. 

Thackeray. The Chronicle of the Drum; the Great Cossack Epic 
(the Legend of St. Sophia of Kioff ) ; the Poems of the Molony of Kilbally- 
inolony ; the Ballads of Policetnan X ; etc. 

Doyle. The Return of the Guards and other poems, 1866. 

Moyse was a private in the regiment of the '' Kentish Buffs." Taken 
prisoner, along with some Sikh soldiers, by the Chinese, he was or- 
dered to perform Kotoo. Looking on it as a degradation, the Englishman 
refused. 

Domett. Flotsam and yetsain^ Rhymes old and new, 1834 to 1875. 
Venice, 1839. Ranolf and Ajnohia, 1877. 

Browning (Mrs.). Promethetis Bound, from ^schylus, translated be- 
fore she was twenty, published with other poems in 1833. The Seraphim, 
1838 ; A Drama of Exile and other poems, 1844 ; Casa Guidi Windows, 
1851 ; Aurora Leigh, 1856 ; Poems before Cojigress, i860. Her Sonnets 
"from the Portuguese" (a modest mask of her own identity), are the 
fullest expression of womanly love ever written, as Sidney's may be 
taken for the manly correspondence. 

Brov^NING (Robert). Paracelsus, 1835 ; Straffo7'd, 1837 ; Sordello, 
1840; Bells and Pomegranates, 1841 to 1846 (containing \h.c. Rettii-n of the 
Druses, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, Colombe's Birthday^ Luria, and other 
poems); Christmas Eve and Easter Day, 1850; Men arid Women, 1S55 ; 
The Ring and the Book^ 1868 ; Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangan — Saviour of 
Society^ 1871 ; Fifine at the Fair, \'i'J'2\ Balaustion's Adventure, 1871, — 
The Last Adventure, 1875 ; Red Cotton Night-cap Country, 1873 ; the Injt 
Album, 1875 ; Pacchiarotto, 1876 ; La Saisiaz, the Two Poets of Croisic, 
1878 ; Dramatic Idylls, 1879 ; Jocoseria, 1882. 

There are at least three versions, apparently by Browning himself, of 
the second stanza of the Lost Leader, Our text seems to be the latest. 
IL— 21 



322 NOTES. 

NicOLL. Born at Auchtergaven, Perthshire. Poems and Lyrics, 1835. 
A second edition, with additions, in 1842, after his death. 

Slee—'i\y ; /art?^^?^— parish ; /a/^— tease ; ^raif— wept ; Ihnmer—vW- 
lain ; 20^^;^— children ; ^^«r^— sedate ; starnies—staxs ; w;a/^— choicest ; 
yett—g?iie ; haffets—ihe temples ; /j/ar/— grizzled ; ^^«/— the rough grass 
on the hill-side. 

DAVIS. Born at Mallow, Cork County. Another of the Irish patriotic 
singers of 1842-48. Most and the best of his songs treat of historical sub- 
jects. 

Scott (William Bell). Born at Edinburgh. A painter and engraver 
of eminence, and writer upon Art. As a poet only known to the " fit au- 
dience though few." He has published Hades or the Transit, 1838 ; The 
Year of the World, a philosophical poem, 1846 ; Poems by a Painter, 1854 ; 
Poems, 1875 ; and z. Poet's Harvest Home, 1882. 

Linton. Engraver and political writer. In poetry 5(7^ Thin, a poor- 
law tale, 1845 ; t\ie. Plaint of Freedom, 1852; Poems, 1865; and verses in 
the Irish Nation and elsewhere. 

De Vere. Irish-born, but descended from one of Cromwell's officers, 
named Hunt, who had a grant of lands in Ireland and settled there. His 
works, dating from 1842. are numerous, generally inspired by pious 
Catholic and patriotic Irish feeling. The Waldenses, or the Fall of R or a ; 
ihe Ijjfint Bridal ; the Search after Proserpine; May Carols (poems to 
the Virgin Mary); the Sisters; Inisfail ; Legends of St. Patrick; Le- 
gends of Saxon Saints ; Alexander the Great ; etc. 

BURBIDGE. College companion and friend of Clough, with whom in 
1848 he brought out a book of poems, Ambarvalia. He wrote also the 
Bridal of Ravenna (with other juvenile poems), 1838; zx^d. Hymns and 
Days, 1851. He is now British chaplain at Palermo. 

Rosenberg. Born at Bath, but emigrated to America. Author of 
Tiberius and other unpublished plays, but only known as a miscellaneous 
writer in American newspapers and magazines. 

Sutton. Clifton Grove; and some verses in Quingucnergia, an essay 
toward a new religion, 1854. 



NOTES. 323 

Weldon, an Englishman (the name perhaps only a pseudonym), 
wrote some short poems over the signature O. O. in the New York Trib- 
ufie, between 1850 and 1856. 

Clough. One very notable poem, the Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich, a 
long-vacation pastoral, 1848 ; Poetical Remains, 1869. 

After Charles Albert's defeat at Novara, the inhabitants at Brescia 
nevertheless rose against the Austrian garrison, on the 21st of March, 
1849. 

Howe. Mrs. Howe was born in New York City. Passion Flowers, 
1854 ; Words for the Hour^ 1856 ; The World's Own, 1857 ; Hippolytus, a 
Tragedy, 1858 ; A Trip to Cuba, 1859 ; Later Lyrics, 1866 ; Fro7n the Oak 
to the Olive, 1868. 

Whitman. Born at West Hills, New York. Leaves of Grass^ 1855 ; 
Drum Taps, 1865; Specimen Days, atid a Collect, 1883. 

Parsons. Born at Boston. Massachusetts. Travslation of the First 
Ten Cantos of the Inferno of Dafitc, 1843 ; Poems, 1854 ; The Magnolia, 
1866 ; The First Canticle {Inferno) of the Divine Comedy, 1867. 

KiNGSLEY. Born in Devonshire ; Vicar of Eversley in Hampshire. 
Novelist, and poet if only for the songs in his novels. But he also wrote 
the Saint's Tragedy^ a drama of mediaeval time, 1848; 2,Vi^ Andromeda, a 
sustained poem, 1858. His collected poems were published in 1872. 

Lewes. Mary Ann Evans (Mrs. Lewes). The Spanish Gypsy, 1868 ; 
the Legend of Jubal cind other poems, 1874. 

Lowell (James Russell). Born at Cambridge, Massachusetts. A 
Year's Life, 1841 ; Poems, 1844; Conversations on some of the Old Poets, 
1845 ; Poems, 1848 ; The Vision of Sir Launfal, 1848 ; A Fable for Critics, 
1848 ; The Biglow Papers, First Series, 1848 ; Fireside Travels, 1864 ; 
Biglow Papers, Second Series, 1867 ; Under the Willows and Other 
Poems, 1868 ; The Cathedral, 1869 ; Among My Books^ 1870 ; My Study 
Windows, 1870. ' 

Lowell (Maria White). Born at Watertown, Massachusetts. The 
first wife of J. R. Lowell. 



324 NOTES. 

Wallace. Born at Lexington, Kentucky. Alban, a Poetical Romance , 
1848 ; Meditations in America and Other Poems, 185 1. 

Jones. A single volume of poems, Studies of Sensation and Event, 
1843 ; republished in 1879. 

McCarthy. Another poet of the Irish Nation. Born in Dublin. 
Poems and Ballads, translated and original, 1850 ; Under-glimpses and 
other poems, and the Bell-Founder, 1857 ; translations from Calderon. 

Locker. London Lyrics, 1862 ; Lyra Elegantiarum, 1867 ; Patchwork 
(prose and verse), 1879. 

Gary (Alice). Born near Cincinnati, Ohio. Clovemook Papers, First 
Series, 1851 ; Hagar, a Story of To-Day.^ 1852 ; Clovernook Papers, Second 
Series, 1853 ; Lyra and Other Poems, 1853 ; Clovernook Children, 1854 ; 
Married, not Mated, 1856 ; Pictures of Coutttry Life, 1859 ; Lyrics and 
Hymns, 1866 ; The Bishop's Son, 1867 ; The Lover's Diary, 1867 ; Snow 
Berries, 1869. 

Cary (Phoebe). Sister of Alice, and born at the same place. Poems 
and Parodies., 1854; Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love, 1868. 

Arnold (Matthew). Poet, essayist, critic. His chief poems are Soh- 
rab and Rustam; Trista?i and Iseult ; Balder dead; the Scholar Gypsy; 
Thyrsis ; Fmpcdoclcs on ^tna ; and Merope, a tragedy. 

Cory. William Johnson, a master at Eton, changed his name to Cory. 
He published a small collection of poems, lonica, in 1858 ; and printed 
privately a few more in 1877. Mimnermus was a Greek elegiac and 
amatory poet of the time of Solon. 

DOBELL. The Roman, 1850 ; Balder, 1853 ; Poems collected after his 
death. 

Brownell. Born in New York City. Poems, 1849 ; Lyrics of a Day., 
1864 ; War Lyrics a?td Other Poems, 1866. 

Curtis. Born at Providence, Rhode Island. Nile Notes of a Ho- 
■wadji, 1851 ; The Howadji in Syria, 1852 ; Lotus Eating; 1852; Potiphar 
Papers, 1853; Prue and I, 1856; Trumps, 1861. 



NOTES. 325 

McGee. Born at Carlingford, Ireland. Was associate editor with 
Charles Gavan Duffy of the Irish Nation ; and poetical contributor to its 
columns. He emigrated to America, settling finally in Canada, where 
he was assassinated on account of his opposition to Fenianism, His col- 
lected poems were published in New York, in 1869. 

Taylor (Bayard). Born in Pennsylvania. Zimena, 1844 ; Views 
a-Foot, 1846 ; Rhymes of Travel, 1848 ; El Dorado, 1850 ; The American 
Legend, 1850 ; Book of Romances, Lyrics, and Songs^ 1851 ; A yourney to 
Central Africa, 1854 ; Poems and Ballads, 1854 ; The Lands of the Sara^ 
cen, 1854 ; A Visit to India, China, and Japan, 1855 ; Poems of the Orient, 
1855 ; Poems of Home and Travel, 1855 ; Northern Travel, 1857 ; Travels 
in Greece a7id Russia, 1859; At Home and Abroad, First Series, 1859; At 
Home and Abroad, Second Series, 1862; The Poet's Journal, 1862; Han- 
tiah Thurston, 1863 ; John Godfrey's Fortunes, 1864 ; The Story of Ken- 
nett, 1866 ; The Picture of St. John^ 1866 ; Byways of Europe, 1869 ; The 
Ballad of Abraham Lincoln, 1869 ; Joseph and His Friend, 1870 ; Trans- 
lation of Goethe" s Faust (both parts), 1871 ; Bcazity atzd the Beast, 1872 ; 
The Alas que of the Gods, 1872 ; Lars, 1873 ; The Prophet, a Tragedy, 1874 ; 
Home Pastorals, Ballads, and Lyrics, 1875 ; Pri?ice Deucalion, 1878. 

Stoddard (R. H.). Born at Hingham, Massachusetts. Footprints, 
1849 ; Poems, 1852 ; Adventures in Fairy Land, 1853 ; Songs of Su7?imer, 
1857 ; The King's Bell, 1862 ; The Story of Little Red Riding Hood, 1863 ; 
The Children i?i the Wood, 1864 ; Abraham Lincoln, an Horatiafi Ode, 
1865 ; Putnam the Brave, 1869 ; The Book of the East, 1871 ; Poems, 1880. 

Stoddard (E. D, B.). Born at Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. The 
Morgesons, 1862 ; Two Men, 1865 ; Temple House, 1867 ; Lolly Dinks' 
Doings, 1874. 

Procter (Adelaide). Daughter of B. W. Procter (" Barry Corn- 
wall"). Poems in Dickens' Household Words, the first by " Miss Ber- 
wick " in 1853 ; Legends and Lyrics, two series, 1858 and 1861 ; A Chaplet 
of Verses, 1862. 

Larcom. Miss Larcom was born in Massachusetts. An Idyl of Work, 
1875 ; Poetns, 1878 ; Wild Roses of Cape Ann and Other Poems, 1881 ; 
Childhood' s Songs, 1883. 

Collins. Idylls and Rhymes, 1855 ; Summer Songs, i860 ; the In}t of 
Strange Meetings and other poems, 1871. 



326 ' NOTES. 

Allingham. Born at Ballyshannon, Ireland, Poems^ 1850 ; Day and 
Alight Songs, 1854 ; Lawrence Bloomfield in Irelaitd, a descriptive poem 
characteristic of Irish life, 1869 ; Songs and Ballads, 1877. 

MUNBY. Benoni, 1852; Elegiacs, 1859; Verses New a?id Old, 1865; 
Dorothy, a country story, 1880. 

ROSSETTI (Dante Gabriel). Painter and Poet. Notable as the founder 
of the pre-Rafiaelite school of painting in England. His poetical works 
are Ballads and Songs; the House of Life, a series of sonnets; and 
Translations from the early Italian poets, and of the Vita Nuova of 
Dante. 

RossETTi (Christina). The sister of Dante Gabriel. Goblin Market ; 
the Prince's Progress ; and miscellaneous poems, 1862-1881. 

Ingelow. Poems, 1863 ; A Story 0/ Doom, 1867. 

Stedman. Born at Hartford, Connecticut. Poems Lyrical a7td Idyllic, 
i860; Alice of Mon7nouth and Other Poeins^ 1864; The Blameless Prince 
and Other Poems, 1869 ; Poetical Works, 1873 ; The Victorian Poets, 1875 ; 
Hawthorne afid Other Poetns, 1877, 

Arnold (George). Born in New York City. Drift and Other Poems, 
1866 ; Poems Grave and Gay, 1867. 

NiCHOL, Born at Montrose. Han7iihal, an historical drama ; the 
Death of Themistoclcs, and other poems, 1881. 

Morris (Lewis). Songs of Two Worlds, 1871 ; The Epic of Hades, 
1877; Gwen, 1879; The Ode of Life, 1880. 

Jackson. Mrs. Jackson (her earlier poems "by H. H.,'* Mrs. Hunt) 
was born at Amherst, Massachusetts. Verses, 1870. 

Morris (William). The Defence of Guinevere and other poems, 1858 ; 
the Life and Death of Jason, 1867 ; the Earthly Paradise, 1868-70 ; Love 
is enough, 1873; the Story of Sigurd, 1876. 

Piatt. Born at Jackson, Indiana. Nests at Washington and Other 
Poe?}zs, 1864 ; Poems i?i Sunshirte aitd Firelight, 1866 ; Western Windows 
and Other Poems, 1869; Landmarks and Other Poe7ns, 1871. 



NOTES. 327 

Thaxter. Mrs. Thaxter. Born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 
Poems, 1874. 

WiLLSON. The Old Sargeant and Other Poems, 1867. 

Winter. Born at Gloucester, Massachusetts. My Witness, a Book 
of Verse, 1871. 

Aldrich. Born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Bells, 1854 ; 
Daisy's Necklace, and What Came of it, 1856 ; The Ballad of Babie Bell 
and Other Poems, 1858 ; The Course of True Love never did Run Smoothly, 
1858 ; Pampinea and Other Poems, 1861 ; Out of His Head, 1862 ; Poeins, 
1863 ; The Story of a Bad Boy, 1869 ; Marjoric Daw atid Other People, 
1873 ; Cloth of Gold, 1873 ; Prudence Palfrey, 1874 ; Flower a?id Thorn, 
1877 ; The Queetz of Sheba, 1877 ; The Stillwater Tragedy, 1880 ; Poe??ts, 
1882 ; From Poukapog to Pesth, 1883. 

Garnett. Primula, 1858 ; lo in Egypt and other poems, 1859 ; 
Translations from the German, 1862; Idylls and Epigrams, from the 
Greek Anthology, 1869. Since 1875 Mr. Garnett has been Superinten- 
dent of the Reading Room at the British Museum. 

Ashe. The Rev. Thomas Ashe has written Poems, 1859 ; Sorrows of 
Hypsipyle, a drama, 1866 ; Edith, 1873; Songs N'ow and Then, 1876. 

Swinburne. The Queen A/other and Rosamond, 1861 ; Chastelard ; 
Atalanta in Calydon, 1864 ; Poems and Ballads, 1866 ; A Song of Italy, 
1867 ; Songs before Sunrise, 1871 ; Bothwell, 1874; Songs of Two Nations, 
1875 ; Erechtheus, 1876 ; Poems aiid Ballads (second series), 1878 ; Songs 
of the Spring-tides, 1880 ; Mary Stuart, 1881 ; Tristra?n of Lyoitesse, 1882. 

Thomson. Born at Port Glasgow. The Doom of a City ; Bertram to 
the Lady Geraldine ; the Lord of the Castle of Indolence ; Vafze's Story ; 
Sunday at Hamp stead ; Sunday up the River ; the City of Dreadful Night 
(written between 1870 and 1874, and published in 1880); and other poems. 

Hay. Born at Salem, Indiana. Pike Cou?ity Ballads and other Pieces, 
1871 ; Castilia7t Days, 1872. 

DOBSON. Vignettes in Rhy?ne, 1874 ; Proverbs in Porcelain, 1877 ; 
Latter-day Lyrics, 1878. 



328 NOTES. 

Buchanan. The collected edition of his poetical works (he is also 
well known as a novelist), comprises Ballads a7id Poems of Li fe ; London 
Lyrics, 1866; Satinets ; Political Mystics ; and a long Ossianic poem, the 
Book of Orm. 

Bridges. Poems, 1873. 

GossE. Madrigals , Songs, and Sonnets^ 1870 ; On Viol and Flute, 1873 ; 
King Erik, a drama, 1876 ; New Poems, 1879. 

Marzials. The Gallery of Pigeons, 1873. 

Beatty. To my Lady, 1878; Three Women of the People, 1881 ; Mar- 
cia, a tragedy. 

Lang. Ballads and Lyrics of Old France^ 1872 ; the Prince of Omtir, 
and other poems, 1880; XXII Ballades in Blue China^ 1880; XXII a//^ 
X, 1881 ; Helen of Troy, 1882. 

Davies. Songs of a Wayfarer, 1869 ; the Shepherd's Garden, 1873. 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES, 



PAGE 

A bird sang sweet and strong i 252 

Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase !) 61 

Above yon sombre swell of land 135 

A despot gazed on sunset clouds 133 

Ah, Marian mine ! the face you look on now 64 

Ah ! my heart is weary waiting 238 

Alas for me that my love is dead ! 279 

A little marsh-plant, yellow green 297 

All thoughts, all passions, all delights 19 

Although I enter not 182 

A man there came, whence none could tell 264 

And thou art dead ! as young and fair 80 

A place in thy memory, Dearest ! 141 

A Poppy grows upon the shore 307 

Arise, my slumbering soul ! arise ! 143 

As a twig trembles which a bird 233 

A sentinel angel sitting high in glory 302 

A sigh in the morning grey 206 

As upland fields were sun-burn'd brown 125 

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay 157 

A thousand miles from land are we 69 

At the king's gate the subtle Noon 280 

Awake thee, my Lady-Love ! 66 

A weary lot is thine, fair Maid ! 32 

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 193 

Beautiful Things of Old ! why are ye gone for ever 150 

Before I trust my fate to thee 261 



330 INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 

PAGE 

Before our Lady came on earth 282 

Beloved the last ! beloved the most ! 41 

Beneath the poplars o'er the sacred pool 308 

Beneath this starry arch 129 

Bird of the wilderness ! 35 

Blessed Hours ! approach her gently 201 

Blue gulf all around us 249 

Bonnie Bessie Lee had a face fu' o' smiles 19S 

Bring the bright garlands hither ! 52 

Burly, dozing Humble-Bee ! 138 

By a kirk-yard yett I stood 196 

Cold blows the wind against the hill 291 

Come in the evening, or come in the morning 197 

Come, my tan-faced children ! • 214 

Come to me in my dreams, and say 309 

Come to me, O ye children ! 161 

Come up from the fields, Father ! here's a letter 219 

Could you not drink her gaze like wine ? 268 

Day and night my thoughts incline 259 

Day Stars ! that ope your frownless eyes to twinkle 55 

Dear Love ! I have not ask'd you yet 292 

Fair is the night and fair the day 281 

False Friend ! wilt thou smile or weep ? 91 

Far out at sea, — the sun was high 132 

Fast falls the snow, O Lady mine ! 263 

First time he kiss'd me, he but only kiss'd 191 

Flowers ! winter flowers ! The child is dead 57 

From the Desert I come to thee 255 

Fu' ripe, ripe, was her rosy lip 196 

Glass antique ! 'twixt thee and Nell 144 

God makes sech nights, all white an' still 229 

Go from me ! Yet I feel that I shall stand 190 

Golden-bill ! Golden-bill ! 34 

Good-night ! I have to say good-night 290 

Go where the water glideth gently ever iii 

Green little vaulter in the sunny grass 62 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 331 

I'AGE 

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! 85 

Hark ! ah, the Nightingale ! 243 

Hear the sledges with the bells ! 169 

Helen ! thy beauty is to me 172 

He loves not well whose love is bold 287 

Here in this leafy place 303 

Here is the place : right over the hill 163 

Here she lieth, white and chill 289 

Hesperus ! hail ! thy winking light 40 

Ho, pretty Page with the dimpled chin ! 183 

Ho, sailor of the sea ! 248 

Hour after hour departs no 

How joyously the young Sea-Mew 188 

How many summers, Love ! 75 

How many times do I love thee ? Dear ! 131 

Hush, the homeless baby's crying ! 262 



I am Achilles. Thou wast hither brought 203 

I arise from dreams of Thee 88 

I ask'd my Fair, one happy day 22 

I bend above the moving stream 134 

I can not forget my jo 246 

If e'er she knew an evil thought 60 

If I desire with pleasant songs 206 

If you become a Nun, Dear ! 63 

I have had playmates, I have had companions 38 

I lean'd out of window 273 

I like a church, I like a cowl 136 

I like not lady-slippers 290 

I loved him not ; and yet, now he is gone 42 

I love him, I dream of him 73 

In schools of wisdom all the day was spent 168 

In Spring the poet is glad 287 

In the days of old 68 

Into the sunshine 232 

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn 119 

I saw the twinkle of white feet 228 

I shot an arrow into the air 156 

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ! 17 

It was not in the winter 123 



332 INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 

PAGE 

I've wander'd East, I've wander'd West iiq 

I v^'ander'd by the brook-side i8o 

Just for a handful of silver he left us loi 

Kiss no more the Vintages ! 124 

Lady ! wouldst thou heiress be 121 

Last night, among his fellow roughs 184 

Last time I parted from my Dear 200 

Laugh out, O stream ! from your bed of green 241 

Let Time and Chance combine, combine ! 109 

Let us sing and sigh ! yo 

Little Mary Anerley, sitting on the stile ! 267 

Long night succeeds thy little day go 

Love laid down his golden head 205 

Love, on the earth alit 299 

Man is permitted much 127 

Medrake, waving wide wings 285 

Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne 19 

Mine eyes have seen the glory , 213 

Mistress of Gods and men ! I have been thine 200 

More than the wind, more than the snow 237 

Mother ! I can not mind my wheel 40 

My days among the Dead are pass'd ,. 28 

My heart is freighted full of love 181 

My heart leaps up when I behold 17 

My only Love is always near 240 

My thoughts by night are often fill'd 68 

Next to thee, O fair Gazelle ! 256 

Night closed around the conqueror's way 54 

No bird-song floated down the hill 166 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame 91 

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note 102 

Not a sob, not a tear be spent 251 

Not in the sky ico 

Not in the solitude 105 

Now tell me, my merry woodman ! 286 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 333 

PAGE 

O bear him where the rain can fall ! 59 

O brooding Spirit of Wisdom and of Love ! 148 

O'er the wide earth, on mountain and on plain , 18 

O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule 24 

Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told 270 

O fair and stately Maid ! whose eyes 140 

Of Nelson and the North 44 

O Friend ! whom glad or grave we seek 64 

Often have I heard it said 41 

O Mary ! go and call the cattle home ! 226 

Once a rose ever a rose, we say 201 

Once, when the days were ages 257 

One more Unfortunate 116 

On me, on me 135 

O Reader ! hast thou ever stood to see 26 

O sair I rue the witless wish 28 

O, Sorrow ! 94 

O the sight entrancing ! 53 

O Thou that art our Queen again ! 62 

O Thou ! whose mighty palace-roof doth hang 92 

Our life is spent in little things 278 

O Warrior for the Right ! 304 

O, what are you waiting for here ? young man ! 301 

O what will a' the lads do ? 36 

Peace be around thee wherever thou rovest ! 52 

Peace in her chamber, whereso'er 270 

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu ! 30 

Poor little Foal of an oppressed race ! 23 

Prithee tell me, Dimple-Chin ! 275 

Proserpine may pull her flowers 130 

Proud Maisie is in the wood 23 

Rains fall, suns shine, winds flee 74 

Rough Wind ! that moanest loud 92 

Rushes lean over the water 251 

Said Fading-Leaf to Fallen-Leaf 292 

Say not, the struggle nought availeth 213 

Say over again, and yet once over again ! 190 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness ! 100 



334 INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 

FACE 

Seek not the tree of silkiest bark ! 203 

Send the red wine round to-night ! 70 

She is not fair to outward view 112 

She stood breast high amid the corn 122 

She stood where I had used to wait 265 

She wallcs in beauty, like the night 83 

She was not fair, nor full of grace 74 

She wears a rose in her hair 259 

Should I long that dark were fair ? 227 

Show me the noblest Youth of present time ! 10 

Since, if you stood by my side to-day , 242 

Sing ! — who sings 72 

Sister Simplicitie ! 246 

So fallen ! so lost ! the hght withdrawn 165 

Soft hangs the opiate in the brain 233 

Softly breathes the West wind beside the ruddy forest 108 

Softly, O midnight Hours ! 205 

So strive, so rule. Almighty Lord of All ! 210 

Stern daughter of the Voice of God ! 7 

Still glides the gentle streamlet on 122 

Still sits the school-house by the road 162 

Suck, baby ! suck ! mother's love grows by giving 39 

Sweet ! thou hast trod on a heart 187 

Swiftly walk over the Western wave ! 89 

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean 179 

The apples are ripe in the orchard 288 

The conference-meeting through at last 274 

The day is cold and dark and dreary 160 

The Earth was but a platform for thy power 136 

The flash at midnight, — 'twas a light 35 

The golden gates of sleep unbar 90 

The grey sea and the long black land 194 

The Happy Land ! 202 

The Isles of Greece ! the Isles of Greece ! 'jj 

The laurels shine in the morning sun 277 

The lost days of my life until to-day 271 

The morning broke, and Spring was there 125 

The moth's kiss first ! 192 

Then fare thee well, my own dear Love ! 51 

The night is come, but not too soon 156 



INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 335 

I'AGE 

The Poem of the Universe 211 

The poetry of earth is never dead loi 

The Prophet once, sitting in calm debate 253 

The rain had fallen ; the Poet arose 179 

The Raven's house is built with reeds 252 

There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear 18 

The sad and solemn Night 107 

These many years since we began to be 298 

The shades of night were falling fast 159 

The shadows lay along Broadway 155 

The streams that wind amid the hills 66 

The sun rises bright in France 65 

The trees in Sherwood Forest are old and good iii 

The truth lies round about us 240 

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall 174 

They bear the hero from the fight, dying 148 

They say his sin was dark and deep 146 

They say 'tis a sin to sorrow 147 

Think me not unkind and rude 141 

Think not alone to do right and fulfil 310 

This is the Ship of Pearl which (poets feign) 173 

This world is too much with us : late and soon 17 

Thou art mine, thou hast given thy word 276 

Thou blossom ! bright with autumn dew 105 

Thou little bird ! thou dweller by the sea ! 76 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness ! 98 

Three years she grew in sun and shower 9 

Thy days are done, thy fame begun 82 

Thy fruit full well the schoolboy knows 58 

Thy functions are ethereal i 

'Tis thought Odysseus when the strife was o'er 309 

'Tis time this heart should be unmoved 84 

To be a sweetness more desired than Spring 271 

To-day what is there in the air 308 

To sea ! to sea ! The calm is o'er 131 

Twin stars aloft in ether clear 227 

Under a sultry yellow sky 260 

Underneath the beechen tree 284 

Underneath the growing grass 272 

Unlike are we, unlike, O Princely Heart ! 189 



SS^ INDEX OF FIRST LINES. 

PAGE 

Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying 25 

Wail for Daedalus, all that is fairest ! 151 

Wail ! wail ye o'er the Dead ! 67 

Wake from your homes in tomb and shroud ! 207 

Warriors and chiefs ! should the shaft or the sword 82 

Wasted, weary, wherefore stay 23 

Weep not for me ! 128 

Welcome, wild North-Easter ! 224 

What is it to grow old ? 244 

What matter, what matter, O friend ! 185 

What's hallow'd ground ? Has earth a clod 48 

What shall we do now, Mary being dead 221 

What voice did on my spirit fall ? 211 

What was he doing ? the great God Pan 186 

When from the child, that still is led 126 

When gloaming treads the heels of day , . , 29 

When I am dead, my Dearest ! 272 

When I was young, I said to Sorrow 204 

When maidens such as Hester die 37 

When the hounds of Spring are on Winter's traces 295 

When the world is burning 237 

When to any saint I pray 221 

Where art thou gone ? light-ankled Youth ! 43 

Where shall we make her grave ? 103 

White rose in red rose garden 293 

Whither is gone the wisdom and the power ? 112 

Whither, 'midst falling dew 104 

Who breathes to thee the holiest prayer 44 

Who is this that comes from Hara ? 235 

Why weep ye by the tide ? Lady ! 31 

With blackest moss the flower plots 176 

Within a low-thatched hut, built in a lane 149 

Within the unchanging twilight 198 

Ye Mariners of England ! 4^ 

You never bade me hope, 'tis true 142 

You promise heavens free from strife 245 



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